Leoht (BloodRunes: Book 3) (26 page)

The woman’s eyes had turned completely white,
and Nuko knew that he would now be speaking with the Three
directly. Excellent, he was getting to them.

“Adrastea, we’ve been looking everywhere for
you, how could you do this us. To me?” The woman voice carried
Cliodhna’s message. Nuko would recognize her anywhere. He hadn’t
realized she’d been one of the ones to stay behind.

Nuko’s anger flared and he cut off whatever
response Adrastea might have given, mocking her in a baby voice
instead, “Oh mommy, I just wanted to stay with my pet humans, I
love them so much.” He sneered and his voice returned to normal.
“Pathetic. Just like the rest of you cowards. But now
I
am
going to rule over them all by myself.”

He raised a hand towards the man and drew
upon his massive power, stronger now that he was within reach of
his body. Soon, he would rejoin it, but first…

The mist once again rolled out into the air
before them, draining out of the man who looked rather
shell-shocked at his suddenly empty mind. Nuko almost felt sorry
for him, after seeing the mind of a god, he might never recover and
be able to go back to being merely human again.

Nuko held the ball of mist in his hand,
stroking it teasingly. He held it up in one hand to illustrate to
the Three. “Now normally, she’d just keep hopping from host to host
when one died.” He jumped the ball across the air in demonstration,
and the combined eyes of the Three followed it with rapt attention.
“She’s created quite a network of followers who she calls ‘the
Hyrdraeden’ who offer up their bodies to her. She’s even been
nick-named ‘Phoenix’ because of this dying and rebirthing process
she’s refined. I’d almost be jealous of her ingenuity if it didn’t
require sharing the bodies with the wretched things. Just the short
amount of time I was forced to bear inside of this one gives me a
dirty feeling, I feel as though I need to scour my scales clean
after the experience.”

The Three’s eyes flickered back to the girl’s
normal color for a moment and then back to white. “Putting two and
two together are you?” he asked them. “The phoenix and the dragon?
Of course when descendants of two humans touched by dragons have a
child it will be special. Leave it to the humans to create some
elaborate ‘prophecy’ about it.”

He grew tired of explaining it to them.
“Lucky for us, I have found a way to stop her from hopping from
hosts. Permanently.”

CHAPTER 19

“Nuko, no!” Cliodhna pleaded through Layna,
“You can’t kill her. Please.”

“Why not? Were you not all here to dispose of
me? You think you’re the only ones who get to decide who should be
punished? Why not punish Adrastea in the same manner you saw fit to
punish me? We both stayed behind when the Elders decided it was
time for us to leave.”

“She wasn’t here to interfere with the
humans, only to try and limit the amount of damage that you could
do to their race. They need to be left on their own to forge their
own way, and you haven’t let them do that. You’ve been
contaminating them with your own ambitions. Who knows how much
farther they would have gotten if you hadn’t interfered. We
expected them to already be branching out into the chaotic lands by
now.”

“Oh boo-hoo for the poor little humans. I
feel so horrible,” he sneered at her, and Cliodhna saw old anger
rising to the surface. “Just think how much farther they could have
come with me leading them! As their god, I could have made their
puny little lives worth living, they could have lived them for
me!”

Cliodhna tried a different approach,
obviously trying to reason with him by playing on non-existent
sympathies towards the humans would be pointless. She hated to do
it, but she had no choice, she couldn’t let him kill her. “Nuko,
you can’t kill her, she’s my daughter…” she paused, hating herself
for the need to say the rest, “...and she’s your daughter too.” She
watched as this sunk in. He looked down at Adrastea’s essence in
his hands, narrowing his eyes at it as if by doing so he could make
it tell him if she spoke the truth. “You were different back then,
kind and gentle. The Nuko I knew, the Nuko I
loved
wouldn’t
do this. Please don’t kill our daughter. I’ve only just found her
again.”

Nuko looked torn, turning his glare on
Cliodhna. His glare wavered, and his gaze found its way back to the
essence in his hands. Did he have enough heart left in him to care
about his daughter? Could he remember who he had been all those
years ago, what they had been? Would it be enough?

*

Nuko looked down at the mist in his hands.
His daughter. How dare Cliodhna have not told him that she was his.
Who did she think she was? This changed things. He would have to
rethink his plan. Luckily, thousands of years in a prison gave one
plenty of time to think, or at least to dream. He had hatched many
schemes to wreck his vengeance against them. He knew just the
thing…

He forcibly expelled the Bloodstone from the
host’s body, tearing a gaping hole in the chest, and shot through
the shield around his body. The spell shattered like a giant glass
dome, sending shards of magic into the air around it. Nuko
propelled himself straight into his true body, simultaneously
tossing the essence of Adrastea into another plane of existence. It
would take all three of the meddlers’ attention in order to keep
her from spiraling out into plane after plane forever, and he would
be free to finish his work here without further interruption.

The feeling of being back in his own body was
wonderful. After spending so much time in that awful human, his own
flesh around him was like coming home. He blinked his eyes and
sighed in contentment.
This
was what seeing was supposed to
be like.

He settled further into his body, and
discovered that he felt rather disconnected. He realized that the
amount of time he had spent in the host had trapped much of his
essence there, barring him from rejoining it completely.

Just as that woman had told the host to try
and warn him of the dangers, he would indeed have to drain the
blood to make sure that every drop of his essence made it back
inside his true form. Too bad the man hadn’t listened to her. His
greed had made the offer of godhood impossible to withstand. Nuko
sent a thought to secure Nathair to the wall and he reached out a
sharp claw to gouge a channel from him into his body, lined with a
spell to attract the blood through it. Then he sat back to wait.
Soon, he would be whole once more.

*

Katya raced to Nathair’s side as something
came flying out of his chest to shatter the dome and he collapsed.
She rolled him over and realized with a gasp that he had a bloody
wound in his chest. She tried to apply pressure and Nathair
moaned.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her and she
shushed him, but he didn’t listen. “I never meant to hurt you, I
did feel…” he coughed up blood and it brought tears to her
eyes.

Then he suddenly was wrenched out of her
hands and attached to the wall, the dragon’s enormous taloned hand
reaching towards him. But it stopped just short of reaching him and
one giant claw scraped through the stone, tearing through it with
ease and creating the most horrible grating noise.

Katya followed, trying desperately to
dislodge him, to stanch the flow of blood that was seeping out of
his wound and coursing down through the channel towards the dragon
with the help of magic.

“It’s no use,” Nathair managed to cough. “You
have to kill me. It’s the only way he won’t be able to completely
merge with his body. If I die before he’s drained my blood, part of
him will die with me. It might give you a chance.”

“I can’t kill you,” Katya wailed, tears
pouring down her face. It was Nuko that they were here to stop, not
Nathair. Nathair was simply a pawn that had been used by the dragon
to get to his body. Katya knew how convincing spells and trickery
could be. He was now the man she had gotten to know in her dreams.
That was why she felt she knew him so well, she had been dreaming
about him. “You’re in my dreams,” she whispered.

Nathair smiled at her, his perfect teeth
stained with blood. “You’re in mine too. You have to kill me. Let
me do this one good act. Let me do it for you. I’ve seen inside his
head: He’ll soon grow tired of ruling us and will get his
entertainment by exterminating our species. I may have had
aspirations about lording over everyone, but I’d like our race to
continue, especially you. He has to be stopped. I haven’t been able
to think clearly since I found that damn stone, never able to tell
which thoughts and ambitions were mine. I’m not sure anything was
ever mine….” Katya was shaking her head ‘no’ at him, her tears
blurring her eyes. “Please, please let me do this one last thing to
try and save you. You have to kill me.”

Katya leaned down and kissed him, tasting
blood, and at the same time Marak unfurled himself from her arm,
heeding her unspoken command. Katya felt Nathair’s lips tightened
under hers as Marak’s fangs broke his skin, and then he
relaxed.

She broke off the kiss, burying her face in
his shoulder and rocked back and forth against

him.

“Thank you,” he whispered into her ear.

*

Cliodhna, Kai, and Naoise all disappeared
from Layna’s head at once as Nuko tossed the misty substance into
the air and it vanished. They were on their own.

Katya immediately rushed to Nathair’s side
where he had been thrown roughly up against the wall. The dragon
seemed to be preparing some sort of ritual to drain the blood into
himself. Layna knew from the Three’s information that he needed to
bleed him to death in order to fully regain his powers. If that
happened, they didn’t stand a chance.

Layna drew Leoht from its sheath and rushed
towards the dragon. So much for killing the body while it slept and
smashing the stone separately. Now they had to deal with an active
dragon who had the Bloodstone already inside of it. She had seen
the stone be sucked up into the chest, around where she assumed the
heart was, and decided that stabbing it in the heart might work. It
seemed like a reasonable assumption to her, but without the Three
to confirm that it would work, it would be a gamble. It was the
best she had at the moment.

She looked around for Gryffon and saw him
watching her, ready to back up her attack. He had drawn his own
sword, and together they raced towards the dragon. The beast
currently had his eyes closed in ecstasy, whether enjoying the feel
of being in its own body once more, or the feel of the blood
draining into it she didn’t know. Whatever the reason, she was glad
for his apparent disinterest in them. She’d much rather fight a
still dragon than an angry fighting one.

When they came within ten paces of it,
however, the black eyes flew open and it let out a blast of fire at
them. Layna flung Leoht out in front of her. When the Three had
realized that it was Cliodhna’s daughter who was hosted in Aileen,
the origin of the sword became apparent. One of Adrastea’s previous
hosts must have given the information to the Slayer which allowed
him to forge a sword that would be able to kill a dragon. That was
why they were so concerned about it, no one on this earth should
have known how to do such a thing. The knowledge of how to destroy
them was a carefully guarded secret.

Luckily, Leoht was also made to defend
against the dragon’s full powers, and now it automatically created
a fire shield around her, allowing her to keep rushing forward even
whilst Gryffon was forced to pause to throw up his own
shielding.

The dragon had realized her advance did not
slow, however, and it whipped its head around towards her, its
mouth wide. Layna’s momentum carried her straight towards it. Rows
of gleaming sharp teeth descended upon her, and she couldn’t get
Leoht up fast enough to halt them…

CHAPTER 20

Nuko rushed towards the woman who had hosted
the Three, looking forward to the sweet aftertaste of their
essences when he ate her. Her body had just disappeared out of
view, blocked by his massive jaws opening wide around her, when he
felt a tremendous pain in the top of his mouth and he reflexively
pulled his head backwards.

He sneezed forcibly, sending a torrent of
blood out and onto the two humans. The man had gotten in the way
and stuck his sword into his mouth! He peered down at the sword in
the girl’s hand. When he had first seen it, there had been
something different about it…

What was this?

Adrastea had given them the means to kill
their kind! How dare she? And she might be his offspring? He roared
angrily.

The two of them hurled balls of fire at him
and he laughed. Luckily, it looked as though the human wasn’t smart
enough to know how to use it.

“Fire against a dragon? Didn’t they tell you
anything?” He let the fireballs hit him squarely and his body
absorbed the magic, making him stronger. His head was growing
clearer by the moment, and he was feeling more and more whole.

He looked down at the two pathetic weaklings
beneath him and snorted in derision at their puny attempts to
thwart him. The girl couldn’t even properly ground herself. He
looked closer and almost laughed again. It was because she had
feelings for the man which she didn’t think he returned, and it was
hampering her talent. How sad these humans were. The observation
made his thoughts drift towards Cliodhna, however, and he angrily
shook it off. He had been a different dragon then…

He suddenly felt a bit dizzy, and his
thoughts became muddled once again. What was happening?

*

Gryffon stopped flinging spells at the dragon
as each one bounced uselessly off its hide. He glanced over at
Layna who stood with Leoht raised, her breath coming in quick gasps
as she panted in exertion. She was covered in dragon blood, and
sweat was gleaming off her, her hair caked to her head.