I groaned and tried to move my legs. They worked, but the knocked-out demon was crazy heavy. It huffed a spurt of smoke at me when I kicked it in the snout. So not out — just bound from within. Its bloody eyes tracked my movement as I stumbled to my feet.
I was in the middle of an empty round room, its finishings bordering on gaudy with a dose of Greek temple.
Nine doors, each decorated with a different theme I didn’t have time to decrypt, led from the circular room, as well as two open archways. Eleven exits. That was good.
The demon lay halfway through one of the doors. The magic of the portal swallowed its body from the shoulders down.
Desmond was trapped under one of the demon’s forearms. I freed him, dragging him as far away as possible, but I was too uncertain of where I was and what was going on to just toss him through one of the doors or archways. I wasn’t completely sure he was alive, either. But I ignored that part.
I couldn’t see Kett. Not until the demon pushed back with one of his smart car-sized clawed feet and shook its head to scream at me with utter rage. Kett had been crushed underneath its chest. I was glad to note that my brain no longer bled from the demon’s roar.
It was obviously still fighting off the skinwalker binding magic, because it had a difficult time following me as I tried to dart underneath its legs and chest to grab Kett. I missed the vampire but also managed to avoid being chomped in half as I spun away and pulled my knife out.
At the edge of my peripheral vision, I saw Kett roll away until he lay crumpled by one of the gold pillars. The demon didn’t appear to care. But it was pretty pissed when I hacked off one of its toes … well, claws. It shrieked again and raised its foot to obliterate me.
Someone bellowed, his booming voice cracking mid-note, behind me. I pivoted away from the demon foot crashing down over me, glancing back.
A boy, maybe twelve years old or so, was charging through one of the archways. He was armed with a broad sword that had to be almost as long as he was tall and wider than his arm. Not a child’s sword. It looked like actual gold, which had to be heavy as hell.
Wait a second — child’s sword? Who gave children swords?
“No!” I screamed, trying to block the dark-haired, insane prepubescent from getting himself killed. But the boy neatly slipped around me, jumped on the demon’s foot as it connected to the ground at my back, then sprung off the foot onto the demon’s opposite knee.
With another bellow, the boy then launched off the demon’s knee and attempted to lop its head off. He managed to hack away a horn, which seriously pissed the demon off. But since his sword was only half as long as the diameter of the demon’s neck, I suspected that the boy had been aiming high.
The dark-haired boy hadn’t really planned out his landing when he leaped. And unfortunately, the demon was shaking off the binding magic a lot quicker than I had hoped. The boy tumbled to the ground at the demon’s feet and was caught in a head-crunching, spine-breaking side swat.
The boy flew across the room, hitting a golden pillar on the far side with a sickening thud. The pillar trembled, which was the first hint of damage I’d actually seen the room take.
The boy dropped straight to the marble floor and didn’t move.
I saw red. I flung myself at the demon, whose attention was still on the boy. I executed the same series of moves he had, avoiding the demon’s massive maw as it followed my diagonal course. But instead of trying to lop anything off, I thrust my knife through the demon’s left eye. Right up to my elbow.
The demon shuddered underneath me — I was perched on its scaled shoulder. Black blood boiled up from the wounded eye, literally burning the skin off my arm. Still, wrapping my free hand around its nearest horn as a counterpoint, I shoved my knife in deeper and deeper. I twirled my wrist in an attempt to scramble its brain, but I was almost blacking out from the intense pain.
The demon finally fell forward. And I fell with it.
One of the doors opened behind me, hitting me with a flood of magic. I wrenched my arm and knife from the demon’s eye, half-fell/half-rolled to my side, pivoted, and managed to make it to my knees.
A big blond man stepped through the door. His power — the magic akin to that of the portal — hit me like a sledgehammer to the heart. Which was a good thing because it felt like it had stopped beating.
Oddly, if I’d had a moment to think about it, I would have noticed that his magic tasted of spicy chocolate. But not jalapeño spicy. Spicy like … like … Chinese food.
I swung my knife forward to defend myself. I could see the bones of my right arm. My mind screamed with alarm at this reveal, even as my body followed through to protect myself from this newest threat.
Time sped up so quickly — he was that fast — that my mind seemed to slow it for comprehension purposes.
The golden tanned god-of-a-man pulled a broad-bladed gold sword out of thin air — reminiscent of the boy’s weapon, but impossibly larger, its pommel encrusted with jewels and pearls. Yes, just out of the air. Not magically sheathed, just out of the air. The absolute power of the sword, an intensely contained replication of the man’s magic, made my eyes water. At least I hoped it was water, because in a completely different way than when the demon shrieked, it felt like my brain was bleeding … or maybe dissolving was the better descriptor.
The blond god was looming over me before I even managed to gain my feet, so I reached up to parry his overhand blow while still on one knee.
Our weapons connected.
My knife shattered.
Somehow, the boy from before — who I thought was dead — was now hanging off the golden god’s shoulder and screaming in a language I didn’t understand.
Shattered pieces of jade showered down and scattered before me.
My momentum carried me off my one leg and knee. I fell forward to all fours. “Bastard,” I said. “You broke my knife.”
I looked up through my bloody, dirty curls at the god with his golden-tanned skin that crinkled around his light brown eyes. The boy was standing, quiet now, beside the man. His eyes were on the demon behind me.
“I’m surprised I didn’t shatter your arm, witch,” the golden god said. His accent was too heavy to be South African, or even New Zealand. “Impressive knife, but certainly you know better than to raise it against a dragon.”
Dragon. My mind skipped a couple of million neurons … though that might have been from the pain in my arm. Dragon.
“Myth,” I said.
The blond god — no, dragon — tilted back his head and laughed like someone who loved to laugh, often and fully.
Then the other doors started opening — eight more to be exact — and more magic flooded the room.
Brain-scrambling magic. Blood-vessel-bursting magic that rolled over and under and around me. I clutched at my necklace and prayed for its protection. It flared underneath my fingers as if desperately trying to combat the tide of earth-shattering power.
Voices swirled all around me. Many different languages, most of which I couldn’t even identify, let alone understand. I couldn’t see Kett or Desmond. I didn’t know if they were alive or not. I had no idea if we were all in the process of dying, being killed, or … maybe … being reborn.
“What is happening to the witch?” I heard the boy cry.
“Drake!” a woman said. Her French accent was melodic and commanding. “Avec moi!”
“Steady, fire breather,” the golden-haired dragon said. “The boy says the witch took down the demon.”
“Impossible,” the French woman answered, changing to English.
“She’s dying.” A young man hunched down in front of me. His skin was a light caramel color, his English accented with Spanish or Latin tones. “Too sensitive.”
“Not dead yet …” I said.
The man — perhaps he was Brazilian — laughed quietly, his voice soft and musical. Then there was more music as he reached out to touch my cheek, but I wasn’t sure if he was singing or if it was a manifestation of his power. I was too overwhelmed to understand the difference.
The room stopped swirling and twirling around me. My hand fell forward as I slumped to catch my fall, unaware that I’d been partially held upright by the power of all the magic before. A long shard of my jade knife cut into my palm, the skin of which was attempting to heal from the demon’s blood. I could still see the bone and inner tissues of my arm.
I rotated my hand to look at the piece of jade in my palm.
The conversation continued around me, but I caught only the bits in English.
“Who opened the portal?” an older man with a British lilt asked.
“None of us would invite a demon through,” another woman answered. Her English was unaccented, at least to me.
“Actually, this looks exactly like your sort of prank, Haoxin. And you put Drake in danger,” the French woman accused.
“Really, Suanmi, you think I would — ”
“The witch saved me,” the boy — Drake — interrupted.
“Shush!” Suanmi said. “A witch could do no such thing.”
“Perhaps you should look closer,” another man said, his accent declaring his Asian heritage.
The argument ceased instantly.
I stared at the shard of jade in my palm, mourning the loss of my knife. It was coated in my blood. Under the circumstances — the fact I was obviously dying here — it was a silly thing to mourn. But I’d found the large stone in the river. I’d dragged it home and hand carved the knife from it. All in all, with the spells and the learning to wield it, it represented two years of my life. Out of twenty-three. That was almost 10 percent.
Without really thinking about it, I pushed my senses beyond the barrier the necklace was trying to maintain, and beyond the dragon magic currently frying my mind. I sought out the magic of the knife and I called it to me.
Every shard of jade responded by sliding back across the marble floor and connecting with the piece before it. The knife resolved itself in my hand, as whole as if it was newly hewn.
Someone whistled.
“Impressive,” the guy with the British lilt said.
“For a witch,” Suanmi said.
I looked up. The Brazilian was before me again, or maybe he’d never left. The music was still playing. He reached for me, brushing his fingers on my cheek and pulling them away bloody. I had been leaking blood, maybe even from my pores.
“Alchemist,” the British-lilt guy was saying. He sounded excited.
The Brazilian tasted my blood. I frowned and shook my head at him.
He grinned at me. He was breathtakingly beautiful. Too pretty for a man actually but some women like that. Pinning my knife hand to the ground, he wove his fingers around the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss.
Protest rose behind him, all the other languages in play again.
Healing magic rushed across my jaw, down my spine, and through my limbs.
The Brazilian released the back of my head and pulled away.
“That’s some kiss,” I said.
The Brazilian laughed, stood, and crossed out of my sight. I felt suddenly like I might be able to stand, but thought that it was probably better to stay where I was.
“You never kiss me like that,” the man — no, the dragon — with the British lilt complained.
The golden-haired dragon bellowed with laughter.
“Qiuniu, there was no point in healing the witch —” the French woman began.
“Alchemist, Suanmi —”
“Seeing as all the interlopers must be dealt with —”
“We don’t go around killing innocents,” another woman interrupted. She couldn’t have looked more like Cleopatra if she’d tried. It had to be deliberate.
“No one enters the dragon nexus and survives,” Suanmi answered.
I stood and got my first solid look at the nine beings arrayed before me.
“It is an unprecedented event,” the dragon with the British lilt said. Oddly, big as a bear, he was swathed in a mink fur coat.
“It is your job to oversee the portals, Pulou,” Suanmi answered. “I hold you responsible for a witch gaining access. This never would have happened with your predecessor.”
“Alchemist,” Pulou corrected. “And, you’re barely old enough to remember my mentor. So don’t —”
“Not solely,” Qiuniu, the Brazilian, said.
“What?” Suanmi snapped.
“She is not solely a witch,” Qiuniu answered, completely unruffled by Suanmi’s obvious loathing of me.
Nine powerful beings were a lot to take in. Some were dressed in African or Asian attire, seeming to indicate a country or climate of origin. Still others were dressed in modern, nontraditional clothing. The golden-tanned dragon sported shorts and a surfing T-shirt that were completely incongruent with the sword in his hand. The American, who was almost as petite and curvy as my mother, wore a silk peasant dress and sandals.
The dragons — all of which were currently staring at me — were arrayed on either side of an ancient-looking Asian dragon. He smiled at me when I met his eyes. Suanmi stood to his left and the golden-haired dragon to his right. Though a few of the dragons hadn’t spoken a word — at least in English that I could understand — they all teemed with the same intense power. I seemed inoculated somehow — perhaps by the healing — from their overwhelming magic.
“Whether she is a witch or an alchemist makes no difference,” Suanmi said. “She brought that with her, and they all must be taken care of.”
“Not this one,” the Cleopatra look-alike said. Desmond was prone at her feet. “He is one of mine.” She leaned down and brushed her fingers through the fur of Desmond chest.
He reacted instantly, his body transforming into the huge mountain lion. He rose up on his massive paws and screamed.
“There, there,” Cleopatra said. “It’s all right, kitty. I’ll see you home.” The mountain lion blinked up at the Egyptian woman and then sunk down at her feet. She patted his head.
“Fine, Bixi,” Suanmi said. “He obviously answers to you.”
Drake peered around Suanmi and grinned at me. I had no idea why I was just standing there while the dragons discussed our fates, but I really couldn’t think of anything to say.
“And the vampire?” Suanmi asked. I wouldn’t have thought that anyone who looked as regal, refined, and expensive as she did would be capable of sneering so venomously. “Who will stand up for the vampire?”