Blood splattered everything now; crimson from Hunter and cobalt from Arini. Other Phoenix were hurtling in from every direction, shrieking like harpies as they dove to aid their King. Layla was bowled to her knees from the next impact of lightning as Hunter tried to lance Arini off of him and missed. She watched in panic as cracks spiderwebbed through the stone all around her. She heard stones beginning to crack free below as shrieks rent the air, other Phoenix diving in to harry Hunter and free their King. Hunter’s storm sliced everything in a confusion of concussions like cannon fire as he struck at them with his magic, keeping the lesser Phoenix away.
Locked in battle, the Royal Dragons shredded each other in washes of crimson and cobalt blood now. And then Layla heard a crunch – King Arini’s body going limp. His crested head hung from Hunter’s enormous jaws, which had somehow gotten around his neck. And with a triumphant roar, Hunter ripped Arini’s head free – decapitating the King of the Phoenix in a wash of cobalt blood.
Layla screamed. A surge of power roared from her, slamming into Hunter like an exploding volcano. She saw his green-black eyes widen; saw the shock in his Dragon’s face as her surge blistered his scales, snapping the bones of one foreleg. But as that hard explosion knocked the enormous black Dragon backwards into the attacking Phoenix, shrieking for murder at the death of their King, the tower sundered with a last massivecrack.
Stones fell – and Layla fell with them, plummeting to the sea.
A roar went through her as her Dragon tried desperately to shift as she plummeted. It roiled as she fell, making Layla scream from its powerful thrust of talons and barbs inside her body. But as the sea flashed near, she knew it was too late. In a fast reflex, her Dragon had only enough time to thrust blistering talons through the fingertips of Layla’s left hand – shredding her jeans and closing her fist around Reginald’s pearls in her pocket as she hit the water.
Layla felt every bone in her body break as she smashed into the sea from hundreds of feet up, Reginald’s pearls flaying her skin as her hand clenched around them in shock. Her eyes were washed open beneath the water, peaceful blue sunlight glimmering through the ocean as her body was consumed by pain. Layla couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as she slowly sank. Her lungs spasmed with pain, drawing seawater deep into her throat – choking.
Drowning.
Far away, something flashed through the deeps. As enormous blocks of stone crashed into the water all around from the crumbing tower, a massive creature of the ocean surged in. Darting through the deeps, it dwarfed Layla with its size, coiling around her in a sheen of luminous silver-white scales. Long filaments like ghostly seaweed surged around her, curling in. She felt her body enclosed in a massive fist of smooth scales and long white talons – an oh-so-careful grip. An enormous fanged snout flashed up beside her, an ice-blue eye flecked with gold boring into her. As she stared into that enormous eye, her consciousness fading, she felt the massive creature turn its head. Snuggling her face close to its neck just behind a mantle of streaming silver-white filaments, she felt fins brush her face. The creature pressed her close, forcing her lips and nose to those gossamer slits.
Breathe, Layla. Breathe, Courtesan.
Breathe.
She did. As a surge of energy shot through her ruined body from the creature’s talons and filaments wrapped around her, Layla felt her heart re-start in a thundering heave. She coughed hard, and though her body was broken, water was ejected from her lungs. Her breath, pressed into the creature’s flowing fins, was full of air upon her next inhalation.
Full of life.
Layla gasped as fresh air flooded her lungs from the creature’s exhalation. Her vision cleared as enormous gill-slits fanned open, flooding air in through her lips and nose as it pushed away the water. Layla gasped its exhalations, each air bubble exhaled from the leviathan larger than her chest as its gossamer fins brushed her face, its talons and filaments cradling her. Only when she’d coughed out the majority of the seawater from her broken lungs, did it flash its thick neck away fast, curl her in its grip – and explode upward through the deeps.
Launched up through the water in its powerful talons, Layla gasped as she broke the surface, even though pain rioted through her broken body. But as if the creature’s life-giving breath had given her opiates also, Layla felt her pain dampened. With an exhilarating rush, she was skimmed along the surface of the water, through a dark mist and back out into sunshine. Layla felt herself curled into the creature’s massive, warm body as it coiled up from the water like a Dragon of the deeps. A speedboat roared nearby, and Layla was laid gently down upon the speedboat’s rough deck by the creature’s smooth coils.
Cries of dismay came; a rumbling voice she knew, along with terse curses from two others. Laying on her back, Layla opened her eyes just as two enormous sets of white-silver wings curled around her, enveloping her in a cocoon of shimmering layers. Kneeling inside that cocoon were the Intercessoria Judiciary Heathren Merkami and Insinio Brandfort. As Layla gasped true air, the two Ephilohim touched all their ephemeral wingtips to her, pouring a blissful light into her broken body.
And within their cocoon knelt Dusk, right beside Layla, setting his hands fast to Layla’s broken form and pouring a healing resonance deep into her bones.
“Hold on, Layla,” Dusk rumbled, holding her gaze with his diamond-light eyes as he held her life steady through their Bind. “I’ve got you…”
CHAPTER 23 – RELEASE
One moment, Layla was dying on the deck of a speedboat in Italian coastal waters, and the next, she was waking in her apartment back at the Red Letter Hotel Paris. Blinking her eyes open, she saw Dusk laying in bed beside her. He stirred as she woke, moving with a smile to cuddle her close under one muscled arm. She was naked and so was he, and though every bone in her body screamed, nothing seemed broken any longer. Layla curled in to Dusk, inhaling his fresh river-water scent as he thrummed a soothing resonance deep into her bones.
“There’s my girl,” he rumbled, giving her a gentle kiss on the lips. “Welcome back.”
“How long have I been out?” Layla asked, enjoying Dusk’s deep warmth like a soothing balm.
“Only twenty-four hours.” He murmured, kissing her forehead. “You’re healing fast. Getting the light of the universe poured into you by two Fallen Ephilohim helps.”
“Heathren and Insinio.” Layla blinked, recalling that the Juds had been there for her rescue. “But how did I get to the boat? What was that creature that brought me up from the ocean?”
“It was Reginald.” Dusk spoke with a deep rumble, a strange look in his eyes. “When I told him Hunter was masquerading as his deceased eldest brother to trap you, he was furious; he insisted on coming with the Intercessoria and me to pull you out of the engagement. As King Arini died, Arini’s boundaries around the Aviary failed. Reginald was on the cliffs of Manarola when he felt you hit the water with his pearls clenched in your fist. He dove in off the cliffs; got you out of the Aviary’s waters.”
“But, I thought it was some kind of leviathan that rescued me…” Layla spoke, astounded.
“That was a Siren, Layla, that’s what they look like.” Dusk’s gaze was deep. “Reginald shifted for the first time when he hit the water – to save you. He’s never done it before. It was instinctual; instantaneous. And thank god he did, because it was the only way for him to get to you fast enough before you drowned.”
“He shifted for the first time to save me?” Layla spoke, amazed. “But… how were you there? And the Judiciary?”
“Remember the call you made to me?” Dusk brushed her curls back from her face. “The line was breaking up, but I heard you sayTempeste Durant. I knew there was no way you would have known Tempeste, and I notified the Intercessoria at once, knowing we had a problem. We got down to Cinque Terre through Intercessoria portals, fast; we had boats patrolling the Aviary’s boundary and Juds in Manarola when the battle happened. But without Reginald’s transformation…”
“I’d be dead. But instead of me, it’s King Arini who’s dead – isn’t he?” Somewhere deep inside, Layla’s Dragon screamed, knowing the Phoenix King was gone. Yet another casualty to Hunter’s crimes, though Layla felt this one intensely, feeling like the possibility of something beautiful had been ripped from her – forever.
“He is.” Dusk’s words were awful, his sapphire eyes bleak. “Phoenix can’t regenerate from decapitation. Hunter was severely attacked by Arini’s people for it, but he managed to escape. The bastard has some kind of portal-making ability – yet another of his dark tricks. The Aviary is exposed now without Arini’s blood to power the wards. Though fortunately, it’s melded back into the Twilight Realm from which it was originally built, rather than the human realm.”
