Chapter 27

Zazie

“I don’t even understand their plan,” one of my diamonds said. I called this one Lully, because it sounded more female. A sing-song, ethereal, bell-like voice.

Rocky, the other one, had a rougher feel and sound, and sounded more masculine.

By sight, my diamonds looked exactly the same in every way. But the sound of them, especially together, was like a symphony.

And the song they were now singing was called “Your Dragons Are So Dumb!”

I told them the plan, and they didn’t like it.

“You can make all these problems just go away,” Rocky was telling me. “How big are their egos that they think they can fight off a djinn king? They’re not kings. They’ve been living in this hostile world for a thousand years. They’re weak, spent too much time in their human forms. It’s not natural.”

They weren’t in their human forms right now. They were in their dragon forms, in a rented airplane hangar in Northern Louisiana.

They were huge.

I mean, I knew they were big, I’d seen them turn into dragons before, but to see it in the light was something else.

If I was a dragon, I had no doubt that I’d be a dragon all of the time. They were gorgeous, ferocious, and shimmery. Like so many gems, sparkling in the light of the room. Their scales were smooth, like stone, and just as a strong.

“Getting blood out of dragons is like getting water out of a rock,” Miles grumbled to himself as he was filling up another bag from Caspian.

After seven hours, he had only drained one liter from either of them.

“Their plan,” I was reminding Lully, “is to try to poison Seraphus by tapping into the sprinkler system in the building they’re holed up in, putting a bunch of dragon’s blood in there, and then making it rain on him. Supposedly it’ll get into his mouth or eyes, and he’ll be dead fast.”

“There’s a lot of doubt in your voice,” Rocky mentioned, because he didn’t know how sprinkler systems worked, and didn’t try. He’d been sitting in a treasure crypt for the last fifteen hundred years, and most things had to be explained to him, but my intonation was not one of them.

“Because I don’t think it’s gonna work. I think they’re wasting their time.”

“Zazie, can you try to be nice?” Miles asked me, annoyed. He couldn’t hear the diamonds speak, so I had probably been coming off as a psycho, but I cared very little. I was really beginning to have two-sided conversations with my little pets, and I was loving it.

They were exactly the pets I’d always wanted—intelligent, funny, beautiful, and extremely low-maintenance.

“I am playing nice,” I assured Miles, who was only scolding me because my dragons could not.

Dragons did not do well with getting their blood taken.

“Blood-letting dragons weakens them considerably,” Rocky informed me. “It’s just going to weaken them.”

“And make them stupid,” Lully added. She was more blunt because she had spent the last three hundred years getting passed around to royal families before landing in the hands of a mob boss for the last twenty years. “Animals, in fact.”

I had to agree. I’d just stopped petting Caspian to sleep. His larger-than-life dragon-tummy wanted to be rubbed like he was a golden retriever. Not to mention that they were still sluggish from the gold which, my diamonds informed me, had caused them to get sick.

“This is not a good time to be fighting an important battle,” said Rocky.

“This is a dumb-fuck idea,” added Lully, voice musical and lulling despite the obvious spite in her word choice. “You should tell them that.”

“Oh, I’ve told them. I’ve told them all,” I assured them. “Nobody’s listening to me.”

“Let them fail, then,” Rocky grunted. “They’ll come around eventually. Good plans stay good. Bad plans stay bad.”

“True story,” I agreed, and then was picked up suddenly. So suddenly that I accidentally dropped my diamonds on the carpet, and before I knew it, I was sitting on Murtagh’s large scaley stomach.

It was hard, but strangely warm. It was tricky to keep my balance as his breathing shook the place I was sitting on, so I sunk quickly down to my knees.\

“My stubborn girl,” he told me, petting a long claw through my hair soothingly, his expression tender.

“My stubborn dragon,” I returned.

He sighed; a loud yawn seemed to tremble under me. It was definitely amazing that despite their size, Seraphus could make both of these dragons tremble. How was it possible? They were the size of jets! They could eat up any human I’d ever met in one gobble, and most without even chewing them first.

“You need to stop worrying about this. You won’t even do the work—Miles will. Miles will put it into the system, Miles will trip the alarm, Miles will do the poisoning. All we have to do is give blood, then take a nap.”

I looked over at Caspian, who was snoring. Loud. It sounded like a windstorm.

“How long will this nap be?” I asked, scrawling my finger across his shiny scales.

His teeth, long and sharp as knives, grinned. “Just a while. You’ll stay with us. When we wake, maybe we won’t have any problems.”

I could tell by his expression that not even he believed that. He was trying to talk himself into it.

“Sure,” I grunted, annoyed.

“Sulky girl. What am I going to do with you?” he asked me, both with a strange mix of adoration and exasperation. He’d been sounding drunk since the first bag, and I had a feeling that the second bag was going to make him sleep hard, just like Caspian was.

“Listen to me, perhaps?” I asked, lifting my chin.

“I did listen to you. But you have no fail-safes for that plan,” he growled. I could feel my seat vibrate.

“Are djinns really this allergic to dragon blood?” I asked him, and he chuckled.

“Allergic,” he repeated, as if he liked that word. “It’s acid to them,” he clarified, and then his eyes rounded to say with interest, “It can heal humans. I wonder what it would do to you.” He made a thoughtful hum as he looked me up and down.

“Doesn’t seem fair that you can shapeshift,” I told him, narrowing my eyes. “Shouldn’t I be able to do something cool?”

“Zazie, you talk to diamonds and can apparently find gems anywhere. You have a perfectly nice superpower.”

I smirked, liking him calling my talents ‘superpowers’. “Yeah, but you don’t listen to my diamonds.”

“Well, they’re very beautiful. But they are rocks, one of which has been sitting by itself for an age,” he reminded me.

“They know more about me than me!” I assured him, rising to the defense of my sweet little diamonds. Or should I say, big diamonds. They were the size of softballs.

“That doesn’t say much. You’ve only known what you were for a couple of weeks.”

I rolled my eyes. This was the same argument that we’d been having for the last two days. Since Russia. It had been just going around in circles.

His eyes were drooping, I noticed.

“Are you picking a fight because you’re a tired, cranky dragon?” I teased him.

“I’ve emptied two liters!” he said, as if this was a huge feat.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s nothing! Look at you! You’re huge!”

“It’s not easy when your blood’s made of crystals. That’s all I’m saying. My body is not efficient in receiving injury, and it doesn’t bleed well.”

I smirked and shrugged, since my blood was supposedly similar, or at least the non-human part. Still, I didn’t have any trouble at all bleeding. “I’d do it for you if I could,” I assured him with a wink.

He rolled his eyes. “I feel better doing things for you than you doing things for me,” he admitted. “You’ve already given me your freedom and your body. Giving you some blood is really the least I could do.”

“Especially when this plan’s not gonna work,” I added.

He huffed and looked me over threateningly.

I just shrugged. It wasn’t as if he was going to eat me. “I’m just saying. Don’t get your hopes up… I know mine aren’t.”

“Go to sleep, Murtagh,” Miles said from down by his feet. “By the time you wake, we’ll see if she’s wrong or not.”

He grunted and then looked at me. His eyes were extremely similar to his human eyes. Just large and grave. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told me. “If you so much as grab something from the vending machine before one of us wakes up, I will not be pleased. What do you think will happen?”

“Fire and brimstone?” I guessed, and he tilted his head, his expression exasperated. “What?” I smirked. “Dragon wrath!”

“Not quite, but you’ll be sorry enough,” he threatened before slowly rolling over in a way that I was able to slide down and off his belly. “Be good,” he grumbled at me.

“Okay, big guy.” I patted one of his suitcase-sized toes. “I’ll be good.”

I looked up at Miles as soon as Murtagh started snoring, which was more or less right away. “I feel nervous,” I admitted, huffing out a sigh.

“Good. You should feel nervous. This is very frightening. If you weren’t terrified, I’d be worried about your intelligence level,” Miles assured me, patting me on the shoulder. “But this will work. Just relax. Enjoy dragon-watching duty. You’ll be doing a lot of it when this is all over.” He gave me a warm smile.

“If we make it through this, remind me to give you a vacation,” I laughed, playfully nudging him on his elbow.

“You won’t have to remind me,” he assured with a smirk. “It’ll be my first one without Caspian toting me along somewhere. Now that you’re around, he’s not as dependent on me.”

I smirked and shook my head. “Sure. The week you’re gone, I’ll adopt a cat. Just to watch him squirm,” I fantasized playfully.

He laughed so hard, so suddenly, that he almost dropped the bag of blood he was holding. “You’re not a bad match for him,” he assured me. “I thought they were going to die alone.”

“Well, no, we’ll die together sometime this week,” I said, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets.

He rolled his eyes at this, his laughing expression sobering. “We’re gonna make it.”

“Or die trying.” I raised an eyebrow. “How are you planning on getting that where it needs to be?”

“Easy. They have taken up residence in the nearest hotel, where Seraphus is probably camped in the best suite, and I know my way around places like that.”

“You’re putting yourself in danger,” I reminded him. “I mean, they say this is the risk-free option, but it’s not. Is it.”

He grinned and puffed out his chest proudly. “Love, I am one hundred and twenty-five years old. I’m already playing with house money.” He nodded towards a cot that had been set up for me. “Go get some sleep. I’ll be going soon, anyway. I’ll let you know as soon as the nightmare is over, okay? I’ll call your cell,” he assured me.

I sighed and nodded, pulling out my phone and putting the volume all the way up before putting it in my pocket. “Alright.” I turned to the two dragons. Shit, they made this massive hanger look like a hamster cage. I couldn’t get over it. “Don’t get yourself dead,” I demanded of Miles, then grabbed my diamonds and trotted up to the cot.

Then I did something particularly unhelpful.

I thought about my childhood, hoping to remember anything.

Nothing came.

Wouldn’t some piece of my past be helpful right about now? After all, my parents were some of Seraphus’ followers! I should remember them talking about him, or about what he could do. Now, in my brain, he’d made a giant dark spot. It was annoying. I mean, sure, it had been annoying my brother for years, but now it was actually annoying me, too.

BLOOP.

I knit my eyebrows closer together and looked down at my cell. It was from a weird number, but then again, I didn’t have Miles in my phone yet. It had been an hour since he’d left, so I figured maybe his job was done, my father was killed, and now it was time to party.

Instead, I got the worst message ever.

It was a picture of my brother, an oxygen mask on his face.

The number was unknown, but it said:

CALL ME.

Immediately, Seraphus came to mind. I sat up, feeling like someone had just dumped a whole bucket of water over my head.

I didn’t like any part of that message. I didn’t want him to touch Zach. I didn’t want him to look in Zach’s direction! I was annoyed that he was in the same world as Zach.

I might have two boyfriends, and I even liked those boyfriends, but to call those boyfriends ‘sweet’ would be a little much. But Zach was sweet, and sick, and I couldn’t imagine how he would survive an encounter with a Boogeyman like Seraphus.

I immediately called my brother.

No answer.

I called Ryan.

Nothing.

Wendy the Witch?

Nothing.

I got up, trying to kick Caspian’s huge body awake. “Caspian!” There was no reaction.

I marched up to his face, grabbing and pulling his nose and ears, trying to open his eyelids.

There was no reaction whatsoever. Just a deep snore.

“Murtagh!” I slid down Caspian’s body, paced across the floor towards Murtagh. I hammered my fists on him. “MURTAGH!”

Snore.

“Fuck!” I pulled out my cellphone again and called Miles.

Nothing.

And so I called the number.

“Well, hello.” I didn’t know what I expected. Okay, I expected a voice like the shadow-man’s. Deep and raspy and creepy.

Imagine my surprise when a perfectly normal, deep, intelligent voice was on the other line.

“You wanted my attention?” I snapped.

“I want more than your attention, actually,” he admitted.

“You hurt my brother, I will stab myself in the neck and you will not get to chow-down on me. You’d have to start again,” I threatened, and I was proud of myself for getting words out at all, because my heart was beating fast.

“The witch and I have an accord. I have not hurt him. Yet. I asked her to let me in with utmost politeness… For now.” He tsked his tongue against his teeth. “Not doing so well, this one.”

“You need to get the fuck away from him. I’m not even playing,” I growled.

“He has nothing I want, except a connection with you. Be a dear and come out of hiding? I’m getting very tired of waiting.”

“Aw, poor baby.” I definitely wanted to throw up. I felt like I was in the middle of a panic attack, yet keeping it cool.

He chuckled like he thought I was just being funny. “How about you and I make a deal? I give you one hour to come to the address I send you, and you get here. If not, I’m going to walk back into the witch’s home, and I’m going to start cutting off pieces of your brother, starting with the toes. I don’t want to have to do that. His mother was such a devoted follower…”

“Good deal,” I growled. What else was I going to say? “Show me where and we’ll dance, Dad.”

More laughter. Hearty, deep, mirthful.

I wanted him to drop dead so much.

“I can’t wait to meet you. Your mother was intelligent, courageous, and savvy. It’s a shame that she didn’t make it out of your ceremony. That fire was ill-timed. It took me months to realize that you weren’t in the fire. And you are my prodigy. Your bloodline is immaculate; you’re barely human. Ten percent!” He actually sounded proud at his disgusting inbreeding program. I felt gross, and in a way that I wished I could pull the skin off my body and wash it inside-out.

“And now you’re gonna eat me?”

“It won’t take long!” he assured me, like the prospect of him eating me alive and toes-first was the image that I had in my head. “I’ll be finished in seconds, and then you’ll be with me always, inside of me, in my blood, helping me conquer this world. Imagine it—I’ll make this world a paradise, and you’ll be there inside of me to experience it. I would not give you death, but rebirth.”

I curled my lip. To be eaten but still alive was a nightmare I hadn’t imagined yet, and I was hoping that my mind wouldn’t, even for a moment, meditate on what that would be like. “A paradise, huh? Just like you made Daconia a paradise?” I prompted.

He snorted. “Daconia is poisoned by dragons and treachery. Humans are easier, mendable, manageable. We would be gods to them. Power goes a long way in this realm. You will see. In one hour. That is, if you want to continue being a sister to someone.”

My intestines felt like they were twisting with the pure rage birthing within. “If you touch him, then I will set this world on fucking fire,” I spat into the receiver, my hand clutching the cellphone in a death-grip.

“Oooh. Touchy,” he tsked lightly. “You have quite the menagerie of friends, as well. If you don’t make it, neither will they. That would be a shame. They’d be so useful in the new world order. And the witch makes delicious cookies.”

“How delightful,” I said after a beat, my mouth folding down at the edges.

“You have one hour,” he reminded. “Looking forward to it.” With that, the line went dead.

I looked around me, feeling almost numb with alarm. My brother was cornered, and my dragons were in a coma, and I had a time-limit.

“FUCK!” My voice echoed in the chamber, but still the dragons didn’t wake up.

I didn’t have any choice, and I didn’t have any ideas. Sure, if I could, I would have taken some dragon’s blood, put it in a kiddie pool, and fucking kicked around in it. See if Seraphus would eat me then! Alas, there wasn’t any around, and I couldn’t even wake the dragons.

I pocketed my cellphone.

I was definitely going to die. I think that was the whole plan. If I stayed, I lost my brother and would be chased for the rest of my life. If I went, I ruined the whole world.

I did the only thing I could do—well, I did two things.

I kicked each dragon very hard to get them to wake up. They continued sleeping.

Then I grabbed my diamond babies and shoved them into a purse that I’d slung over my shoulders. I was careful with them, but even touching them made my heartrate slow down to far more comfortable levels.

I put the bracelet on and twisted my hand around the ancient ring on my finger. All working together, it made me feel as if I was electric; completely powered-up.

I’d need that. What I was undertaking, even though it was something I’d tried to talk Murtagh and Caspian into, was extremely frightening.

Not just for me—for the world. But I wasn’t joking. I would burn the world for my brother.

This hangar had no cars, but it did have a truck in it, apparently to stock snacks onto leer jets, and the keys were inside conveniently.

I only ran over a few dozen cones as I left the hanger, because this was like driving a boat, and I’d barely driven anyway. In fact, trying to zero in on how to drive was distracting me somewhat while I journeyed to my doom.

I looked in my rearview mirror, my white eyes looking back at me. They frightened me at first, but I had to admit, now I thought they looked pretty badass. Too bad I couldn’t enjoy them.

I heard my cellphone ring. It was Caspian. I took a deep breath and answered.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“Finally up from your nap?” I snapped.

“You’re gone!” I heard Murtagh demanding Caspian to tell them where I was, so I answered. “He’s going to kill my brother. I’m not waiting around. I’m going to Newsome.” I eyed the address on my phone. “And I’m not coming home without him.”

“My ass you’re going to get him!” he snapped. “Are you insane? Seraphus is going to eat you! He’s going to start the apocalypse!”

“He called me and made that very creepily clear, thanks,” I snapped.

“Are you driving? Stop the car, Zazie. Come back. Now!” Caspian demanded in his strong, bossy accent that I was positive had always worked. Until now.

I sighed, blowing strands of hair out of my face. “Look, I have a plan.”

“You don’t have a plan! You have a hypothesis!” he hissed. “Zazie—you cannot give your life for anyone. You cannot give yourself for your brother. Your brother’s time is at an end. You are too important. If he kills you, the world ends. It ENDS FOR EVERYONE,” Murtagh’s voice suddenly cut in, angry. They sounded like they were scrambling. “Wait. Just wait until we’re at full strength, and we can protect you.”

“I can’t. He’s waiting on me right now.”

There was silence on the line. “We’re coming for you. Don’t go to him, Zazie. Just stop the car. Pull over. Fuck!”

I heard the cellphone drop and a scuffle where it seemed like Caspian had tripped.

Apparently, they weren’t back to normal just yet. They had mentioned to me that it would take a while to get to full strength after they drained any blood from themselves.

“There’s nothing else to do. Miles’ plan isn’t gonna work—he’s not even where Miles thinks he is!”

“Zazie—I understand you would do anything for your brother. But you don’t seem to grasp that we would do anything for you. Life is boring without you. Not worth living. I need you to stop.” His voice was desperate. “STOP.”

“I can’t stop!” I hissed. I couldn’t imagine Zach dying. I couldn’t even imagine him succumbing to cancer, let alone being murdered by the psychopath sitting himself on far too many branches of our family tree. That was too horrible.

Zach and my grandmother had raised me. Zach had always kept me safe and well. Kept me living in the world. He wasn’t just my brother; he was all my family wrapped in one. My closest friend.

And you know, there was Ryan.

“If I don’t make it, guys… It’s important that you look after Zach. As best that you can,” I told them firmly. “Promise me.”

“Zazie—don’t!” I heard Murtagh say over Caspian’s voice.

“I love you both. Do me a favor and live through this.” That was much, much harder to say than I’d like to admit. My skin was completely covered with goosebumps. “Okay?”

“Look, I’m not mincing words. You need to Stop. The. Car,” he growled.

“See you on the other side of this,” I sighed, and hung up the phone.

I had to then listen to ringing all the way there.

I wanted to cry, but I was too scared. I didn’t know that was possible. It seemed like those emotions would have gone well together. I was shaking, trying to contemplate what death was going to be like.

As soon as Zach got cancer, I thought I lot about what the world would be like without him. Honestly, my brain just imagined a similar world, just one that was grey-toned, serious, sad, and dark. Like a gritty war movie.

My own death I had never meditated on. Sure, about the time I was hanging in a mobster’s torture chamber, I had the thought of, ‘Well, this is it!’ but then I didn’t think about ‘it’.

I had a bad feeling my ‘it’ was going to look a lot more different than anyone else’s. There was magic in my blood that was going to fuel the magic in Seraphus, a creature so bad that he made even a hell-demon nervous, and I thought hell-demons were supposed to be tough. At least they were in horror movies…

I passed Newsome University. The pretentious university had only been on the charts during the last decade. Before then, it had been falling down. There was still some of that sort of castle-lost-in-the-woods vibe, but it was a pretty place. Quaint, even.

Or it would have been pretty if it wasn’t raining cats and dogs. As soon as I hit the town, a storm moved in. Now it was raining buckets in a torrential downpour.

Kids were running to class like their asses were on fire.

I’d never been huge on studying, never was a great student, but I definitely felt jealousy towards them. The only thing they had to worry about was getting wet and frizzy hair.

I had to worry about a lot more things. I was barely older than a college senior, but here I was. In a completely different existential experience than they were and probably about to die.

Hell, they were probably about to die, too, if my plan didn’t work.

I frowned. Well, at least I wasn’t jealous of them anymore. They were going to probably be going from a carefree existence right to the rabbit hole of a world ruled by my evil father. Lucky them.

I could feel the diamonds in my coat pocket. I could hear them say, “Don’t worry.”

“You think this is going to work, right?” I asked them.

“There’s a chance, yeah,” said Lully. It said it very sweetly, but it was hard to miss the hidden context of doubt. “Maybe fifty/fifty!” That came out as optimism, like I should be happy that statistic was so high.

No wonder they hadn’t given me the statistics earlier. The statistics sucked.

“You know the whole world revolves around you being right, right?” I asked frankly, feeling my annoyance prickle at the same rate as my nervousness.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Rocky. “The world will figure itself out. Always does,” it said very optimistically for a rock that had been trapped in a cave for as long as it had.

“Oh, God, I’m gonna die,” I breathed to myself, and then noticed something through the sheets of rain.

Line after line of hooded figures lined the street.

At first, I didn’t think they were real. Cardboard cutouts or something.

Nope, they were people. Cultists—excited, purpose-filled ones, looking at my truck come down the street.

Oh man. There were way more cultists than I thought…

What if I captured Seraphus and still had to fight these maniacs?

And these people were probably next level. And I’d been thinking about them since I realized that my parents were one of their ranks. These were people who had seen magic. They’d probably seen Seraphus cause unanswerable wonders. They believed him. They had seen him do his thing with their own eyes. Generation after generation, keeping secrets and seeing what had to have been some pretty amazing shit for a mortal to see.

I stopped the truck, Siri informing me that I’d reached my destination with about five minutes to spare, and I climbed out and into the rain.

I was going to just sit there and collect my thoughts, but honestly the longer I sat in that car seat, the more frightened I was getting. The only thing I could become was even more worked-up.

I could tell the lines of cultists were looking at me, despite the fact that they wore masks that completely obscured their faces, making them all look like reapers. Blackness could only be seen under their hoods.

I shook my head, letting the water pelt down on me.

Seraphus was sitting outside a store, one called ‘Little Mama’s Boutique’, on a swinging bench, protected by the rain from a porch above.

I knew him because of his eyes.

White, like mine. Glistening and glittering like beautiful opals, sitting in a handsome face that had dark hair. He was wearing an expensive suit.

He smiled at me as I approached. “Daughter,” he greeted above the sound of pattering rain.

I shivered and curled my lip. “I wouldn’t be proud of it if I were you. You’re a disgusting creature.”

He didn’t even flinch. “You have some sass to you. How have your dragons even managed?” he asked me with a smile. I think he was trying to poke fun, as if just mentioning that I was with dragons should be gross.

It was not gross. They were handsome as fuck and probably on their way here right now.

“Where’s my brother?” I asked frankly.

“Inside, fine. I’m not a monster. And he is kin. I think I’ll heal him up at the end of this once I reach full power. It’s nice to have family around, isn’t it?” His smile was toothy and frightening, but I could still comprehend his words somewhat.

I blinked slowly. “You can heal him?”

He shrugged. “At full power? There’s not much I won’t be able to do. I’ll make this realm everything it should have ever been.”

“You’re a gross fantasist,” I said. Normally I liked fantasists, but he was criminally insane. Insane enough to breed his own family members to have me born to begin with.

“Buckle up, Zazie,” he groaned, like I was being a naive child. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

“Not so comforting for the eggs,” I assured him frankly, fisting the diamonds in my pocket.

He nodded. “I guess not. Here, let’s get to business, shall we? My people are getting wet.” He stood up from his seat and came towards me.

I reached out with my diamonds and jabbed them into his chest.

There was a blinding light, a numbing electricity seeped in and sparked around us, a fiery warmth bloomed.

And then it fizzled. Seraphus’ laughter suddenly rang out.

“How weak do you think I am?” he asked when he saw me looking down at the diamonds in disappointed horror. “Do you think someone as powerful as me can get captured into stone?”

Ohhhh shit.

He stepped forward, put his hands around me, and I tried to back up.

That was when a demon ripped through the window, with a sword drawn, and he was heading right for me.

Time slowed. I swear I could see Samael’s expression—focused and alert and intent. He was going to kill me before Seraphus could. He had no other moves on the table. Neither did I. I almost had a split second to feel… relief.

And that was all during a female scream from inside.

But then I was rammed forward by my fast-moving father and lifted into the air, busting through the top of the covered porch with break-neck speed, and I could feel the impact on my head, blinding me with pain and numbing my thoughts.

The only thing I saw right now was fire, sparkling off the eyes of my father.

Shit had gotten real because my dragons had shown up.

And despite the fact that I imagined that they were pretty pissed at me, they had come ready to kick some ass.

I reached out, slamming the sharp end of the hard diamonds in my hands hard against the chest of the creature that held me as he grunted with annoyance. Blood dripped down the side of my face, down my nose.

“Stop fighting me!” he hissed, then tried to pull me close to his chest, apparently so that he could use magic against the dragons.

Here was the thing that was becoming super-obvious to me: he needed to start eating me when alive, but that was very hard to do when I was struggling, and his servants were all getting decimated by dragons.

And those dragons were bowling their fire down on the sidewalk.

It was the craziest fucking thing I’d ever seen—it was like they were bowling for spares. The cultists were now out of alignment, screaming and running around like confused chickens while wearing their bright-red robes that seemed very, very flammable.

I almost felt bad for them.

They bet on the wrong fucking horse.

Dragon roars lit up the sky, sounding like crunched-up metals. It was the sound that you can hear all the way down your spine and into the pit of your stomach.

Seraphus shot me further up into the air like we were attached to a rocket. I was still trying to violently kick myself free—if I fell, so what? If I died, the problem was going to go away, especially if my dragons took care of the cultists, who all seemed to have showed up for the big event.

I slammed one of my diamonds into his face, and he started to bleed. The expression he gave me was murderous.

And then he bit me, my body flush with his, his teeth tearing violently at where my shoulder joined with my neck.

I screamed—had to. It hurt every bit as much as I feared it would to have someone’s teeth cut into my flesh. And he wasn’t just piercing me like a vampire supposedly would. Oh, fucking no. He was going Dusk-till-Dawn on me.

Until he wasn’t.

He pulled back, holding me much more loosely and looked at me dazingly. “What did you do to me?” he asked, his expression distant.

He looked like he was in pain.

I didn’t ask questions. I just reached my diamonds up and slammed them into his head at the same time.

There was a blinding flash of light, the same numbing spark of electricity.

But this time, there was a blast, knocking me free and upwards, bounding head over heels into the air. For a moment, I had a searing pain up my arm, but that was forgotten about, because I was falling.

Where Seraphus was, I had no idea. Nor did I have any ideas.

I just screamed.

Yeah, skydiving was on my bucket list, but not today. And a parachute was a very important element of that fantasy. My eyes watered as the wind met with me.

“CASPIAN! MURTAGH! HELP!” I screeched, windmilling my arms around as if I could swim myself through the air. This of course, did nothing. The wind pushed back on me, the pressure intense, my hurting, bleeding head pulsing.

I was going to black out.

“HELP!” I screamed, watching the chaos beneath me coming into clearer view.

I blacked out. If you can imagine, I just let it happen, felt it start, and leaned into it. I didn’t want to be conscious when I became a pancake after all. The last sound I was sure I heard beside the deafening wind was a dragon roar.

And then I woke up, my body whiplashing in another direction. And I realized I was now going sideways. At first, I worried it was Seraphus and violently tried to wrench my body free, but then I realized that what was around my body wasn’t arms. It was large talons.

I breathed out a sigh of relief and then tried not to pass out again.

The whoosh of wings kicked up the rain and the wind all around us, but the smell of fire and burning flesh couldn’t be ignored. It was searing my senses, keeping me distracted until I was dropped onto the ground in the mud, and then a second later, Caspian had his arms wrapped tightly around me.

“Zazie? Darling, you need to talk to me,” Caspian demanded, his voice trembling.

My eyes fluttered open.

My whole body hurt. And my hands were empty. “My… My diamonds…” I choked out, my neck feeling stiff and searing with pain.

“Get her to the witch,” I heard Murtagh say, and my body began to get jostled. I moaned in response.

There was smoke that flooded my senses, but then the rain stopped pouring down on us as we went inside somewhere. Now most of the smell was that of frankincense and citrus.

“Mon deu!” I heard a feminine voice gasp sharply. “Allon! Come in. Lay her right there. Lord, but she beat up real good.”

“…Diamonds… My diamonds…” I groaned.

“They’re not important right now,” Caspian told me, and I could feel his hand brush my hair back off of my face.

“If she wants them, you’d better go get ‘em,” the witch said from somewhere above my head. Her firm tone didn’t broach any argument. “If she’s making words right now, those words are important.”

There was silence, but before too long I felt the diamonds back in my hands. I could feel their heat, the vibration coursing up my arm.

“You did very well, mistress…” Lully told me in a calm, soothing voice. “Just relax; we’ll do all the work.”

“Is she… Is she?” Caspian was asking above me somewhere. He sounded like he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

I don’t know what he was going to say. Because I lost consciousness at this point.

I dreamed I was in a black room; it was peaceful except for the utter darkness. I felt like I was in a vast chamber while feeling warm and coddled.

“Good work,” I heard a voice say.

I spun around and I saw two outlines of a very tall person. Maybe thirteen feet tall; I craned my neck all the way back.

“What?” I asked them.

“Your blood is so unique, such a strange blend of djinn and human. A special girl born into this world to destroy it and to save it,” the outlines said. I recognized their voices now, even though they were different. “Our precious one.” I felt the outline touch my face, and it was warm, and soft, and wonderful.

“Rocky? Lully?” I asked, looking up at the beings. “Why are you so… big?”

“We’re neither big nor small. We’re blending our minds with yours, our sweet mistress,” they said. They talked together, as one. “We are healing your broken body and wanted to see you closer.”

I looked around, and saw that through the darkness, there was light, now reflecting off of certain angles. “Am I inside the diamond?”

“You can see what we see?”

I walked through the darkness and up towards the light. A small window could be seen, letting the light in, and I looked out.

I could see everyone. Murtagh, Caspian… Looking so distraught, so worried.

“Your dragons have long awaited you as well. You can tell. They yearn.”

“What happened?” I asked, turning. “What happened to Seraphus?”

They laughed.

It wasn’t creepy, but a sweet laughter, one I was smirking at before they even answered. “You killed him. Dragon blood is poison to him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a dragon.”

“Your son is a dragon. And he grows in you, and shares your blood with you,” Rocky said, moving his hand forward and reaching down, touching my tummy with his dark hands, surrounded by his white light.

I looked down, and I could almost feel it. Something different, vibrating inside of me, more precious than any diamond.

Holy shit. Shit.

“Am I…? I’m…?” I asked, startled. I was only twenty-two. This seemed like a lot to process.

“With child. A child that is human and djinn and dragon-kind. The first. We knew one was coming for thousands of years. It was foretold, but the secret got lost in the sands of time. You have saved this realm and the dragons’ realm. You have stopped Seraphus, after a millennium of hopes and the prayers of millions.”

Wow. Not bad for someone that graduated high school with a 2.5 grade average. Do the dirty with a couple of super handsome dragons, get knocked up, save the world. And then, here is my thank-you.

“Your brother is fading,” they said, really breaking me out of my reverie and my deep thoughts. Because a baby? A baby I could handle. There were books and programs to help me through, and that didn’t even start to cover how I had two baby-daddies, not just one, that I knew I could lean on. They wanted this.

But Zach dying? Nope. Couldn’t handle that. I’d probably start crying and then not be able to stop.

They didn’t even have to tell me how to wake up. I yanked out of it like I was in a bad dream.

“Bring us to him,” the diamonds told me in the darkness I woke up to.

My eyes had trouble adjusting, but eventually I realized that Murtagh was snoring on my right-hand side of whatever bed I was on, and Caspian was leaning against the bed on the ground. I could see his blond head slumped back.

Careful not to wake them, I pulled myself out of bed. I’d been dressed in a large t-shirt and nothing else; someone had been taking care of me. My body hurt, but not that much. I felt like I was recovering from a flu, and not getting rammed through a porch ceiling or getting my neck ripped into.

I almost stepped right on top of Miles, who was on the floor, curled up like trusty hound dog. I shook my head; at least he was safe. And I would get to hold the fact that my plan ended up being better than his plan over his head for the rest of our lives.

I was quickly aware that I was creeping through a haunted house. I could feel it, the spookiness of it, the uneasiness that settled in my bones.

I looked back and forth.

“Looking for your brother?” hissed the raspy voice of the shadow man.

I whipped around and saw, blinking, that a very light, almost emaciated, shadow stood at the wall on my side. It pointed down the hallway. “Follow the light.”

Seraphus had done a number on that thing, I could tell. I’d heard that the shadow was subdued, but it looked like it had gotten the shit kicked out of it.

I blinked, got myself to nod at the intensely creepy creature, and then entered the bedroom.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” the little witch was telling Ryan, who towered over her in comparison, looking like a gargoyle. He wasn’t one to cry, very stoic, but he didn’t look like he was doing very well as he hunched over the bed where Zach was panting. His skin was pale and white. “Death is coming; it’s on its way, cher. You have to say your goodbyes now.”

And Ryan started to break down. All he had to do was look down at Zach and realize what I already knew—he was seconds away from not being Zach anymore. But Ryan crying was a gut-punch. I hadn’t seen it happen before, and I didn’t want to. He had an ugly man cry that would put even Mel Gibson’s to shame, complete with lip-quiver.

“No. We’re not saying goodbye,” I told the witch stubbornly as I barged into the room, unable to stand still for a second.

My presence in the room shook the witch and Ryan up. They spun and looked at me like I was a ghost.

“My lord! Look at you on your feet!” Wendy said wearily. She looked like she hadn’t slept for days, although when I’d first met her three weeks before, she looked extremely full of life and energy.

“Zazie!” Ryan blinked at me. “Your eyes.”

“Your diamonds…” Said the cat that had settled himself at the foot of the bed. His eyes looked right at Lully and Rocky with salivating envy.

I walked right up and placed the diamonds on either side of Zach’s chest, then plucked my ring off my finger and stuck it on Zach’s.

Zach’s eyes opened, and they weren’t quite like mine, but they were definitely much bluer than I remembered them being. “Zaz,” he whispered.

“Stop talking and stop dying,” I demanded. “I’ve done too much for that shit.”

“We need more…” the diamonds told me. I saw Ryan and the witch suddenly clutch their ears from the strange piercing noise that rang through the room.

“More what?” I asked, already inherently knowing they needed more gemstones, more power.

“Who are you talking to?” the cat asked, then looked at the diamonds. “Were you talking to the diamonds?” he asked with interest. “Wendy! We got Gem-Spirits!” he announced, almost smiling with his long, yellow cat-teeth. He sounded like he had heard of something like this, which was something to really consider when my world didn’t feel like it was falling apart.

“Wake up Caspian,” I told the cat firmly. “I need him and Murtagh.”

The cat straightened. “Why me?” he asked with confusion.

“Because you’ll do the job quickly,” I assured him.

The cat sighed but then jumped off the bed and out into the hallway, muttering, “So many dollars. There will be so many.”

I sat with Zach. He was breathing so hard that it hurt to watch.

Ryan put his hand across my back. “Zazie…” he said, and I think he was about to assure me that it was time to let Zach go. You know, like he was a dog I needed to put down or something, and nothing he said was gonna cut it.

I looked at him. “Ryan, with all due respect, please shut your stupid hole.”

“OH MY GOD, EW! GET OFF ME!” I heard Caspian shriek from the other side of the house. “NO, NO, NO!” Then there was the sound of dry heaving.

“He’s up now,” Wendy assured, then reached forward and poked one of her fingernails against the diamond as if to see if it was real.

After a moment, Caspian and Murtagh were rushing into the bedroom, looking surprised to see me there. Or anywhere.

“Zazie, you’re—” Murtagh began, gesturing at my non-broken body.

“I need your rings. And necklaces. And any jewels you have on your person.”

Their expressions seemed suddenly muted, confused. “Why?”

I gave them a look that I hoped asked them if they were dead or stupid, or maybe my urgent desperation was written across my face.

Caspian took off his rings. Murtagh took off an amulet around his neck, and then his belt buckle. Caspian had gold chains around his neck and then random diamonds in his pocket.

As he was searching in his other pocket, after they’d piled it up on the bed in front of me, I saw that Murtagh was watching Caspian pull another group of gems—these being emeralds—out of yet another pocket.

“What?” he asked towards Murtagh’s judgmental look. “Shelf the look, I’ve had a bad day already,” he pouted.

I shook my head, ignoring their early-morning bickering, and started to place jewels all over Zach, finishing with my bracelet, which I placed over his heart.

My bracelet looked different now. It used to be full of sapphires and diamonds, but now it was as black as obsidian.

I pulled the bracelet away, pinching it between my fingers as I handed it to the witch, who put her hands out for it readily before sliding it onto her own wrist.

The diamonds all started to suddenly glow and vibrate. I could feel the pulsing everywhere, in every muscle of my body. My ears, my jaw, my groin, my fingers and toes, everywhere.

Zach gasped in a rattled breath, his hands pinned down towards the bed, looking like he was being flattened, or seeing something he didn’t like.

Ryan reached forward, but the witch put her hand out. “Don’t,” she directed. “She knows what to do. I heard of this. This is old magic, cher. Old as sand.”

The diamonds seemed to fade and fill with a red liquid, which then dissipated away, as if filled with wind.

And then the gems all pulsed one last time and faded.

Lully and Rocky sat still now, quiet and peaceful next to my brother. The rest of the gems around us had turned to dust. The byzantine ring was gone, as was all of Caspian’s.

But Zach pushed himself up in bed. “What in the New Aged hell was that?” he demanded, looking pissed.

I jumped on the bed and hugged him, feeling the strength that was back in his arms. Somewhere to the side of us, Ryan came in.

Ryan was still sobbing.

“My gems are gone, aren’t they?” I heard Caspian say sadly from the edge of the bed.

I smirked and, wiping a stray tear that had been dripping down my face of its own accord, turned and put my arms around Murtagh and Caspian, intent on pulling them close to me. “I’ll make it up to you,” I told him happily.

I felt their arms close up on me and then said, “I got something you’re gonna like better than diamonds and rings,” I assured him.

He snorted. “As long as you’re happy and healthy, my darling… I can always find new fine things. You are the most precious thing we horde.”

I shook my head. “I’m not.” I brought them close.

And I told them what my diamonds had told me, that I had their baby in my belly, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Their expression? That was worth all the gems in the world.