“I’m just trying to assess the potential risks—”
“No,” Nick said, trying not to appear appalled at the thought. “She did not give me one of her teeth.”
“Feed you—” Gabriel shook his head. “Never mind. You’re vulnerable. As much as your instincts make you want to be the one to kill Malvern, I can’t promise you anything. Our first priority is to get you and her out of there alive. We are immortal. You are not. I will attempt to allow you to kill Malvern to appease the bond, but I won’t let you die to do it.”
Nick buckled his bulletproof vest. He preferred not to die. “Sounds fair to me.”
“I’m no good at hand-to-hand, Gabriel. You’re going to have to take him in.” Tobias started stripping off his shirt and pants.
“What’s happening right now?” Nick asked as Rowan’s brother stripped to his boxers.
Gabriel grabbed Nick’s arm and dragged him back toward the van. “Rowan must have told you what we are.”
“Of course she did. I just—”
The sound of cracking bones and bursting organs filled his ears, a snap like an overstretched rubber band, and then the clink of metal on metal. Nick whirled to find a brilliant white dragon with piercing blue eyes staring at him from between the trees. The faintest hint of blue radiated between the scales of its chest. The dragon that once was Tobias stretched its wings. Nick tripped while backing the hell up and fell on his ass.
“Holy fuck. What the— Huge. Fucking huge!”
“I take it you’ve never seen Rowan like this,” Gabriel said.
Nick shook his head vigorously.
“By the Mountain,” Gabriel said, appalled. “How well do you two know each other?”
“Well,” he stuttered. “Real well. I’ve seen her wings, just not…” He gestured in the general direction of the fire-breathing semitruck between the trees.
Gabriel reached into the van and thrust a CA-415 into his hands. “You know how to use one of these?”
“Stay on the trigger end?”
“Good enough.”
“I thought bullets couldn’t kill vampires.”
“These are silver. Aim for the head. Plus you’ll have these.” Gabriel strapped a couple of wooden stakes to his thighs and slung a crossbow and quiver of wooden arrows to his back.
All together it was heavy as hell, but Nick sucked it up. There was a reason he worked out. You never knew when you’d need a few pounds of muscle.
Once Gabriel was similarly armed to the teeth, Nick started for the tree, wondering how he was going to climb up its trunk to drop himself over the wall when his every limb was weighted down with weapons and ammo. He paused when a hollow, sonorous flap like unfurling canvas met his ears. He whirled to find Gabriel’s green wings glinting black as they shifted in the light. Monstrous wings, the hooked barbs at the arches more pronounced than Rowan’s, whose now seemed positively feminine by comparison.
“Hold tight,” Gabriel said.
“What?”
There was a rush, and then all the air left Nick’s lungs as he was carried straight up, through the leaves and branches of the woods, and over the massive wall. Although Gabriel set him down softly on the other side, it was a long moment until he could catch his breath. He’d never been much for heights, and that ride was like the most intense roller coaster he’d ever been on.
“You okay?” Gabriel squeezed Nick’s shoulder, and he forced himself to swallow down the rising urge to be sick.
“Yeah, of course.”
The guards in front of the building had already spotted them. A dog began to bark, and men yelled at them in three different languages.
“Tobias,” Gabriel yelled. “It’s time to clear the way, brother!”
Nick looked toward the sky as branches snapped and a rush of wind blew into him from above. He staggered backward. The airplane-sized white dragon that was Tobias swooped over his head, roaring loud enough that the sound vibrated in his bones. As Tobias rushed toward NAVAK’s security contingent, the dragon’s chest expanded, glowing bright sapphire blue behind the white scales. The guards fired.Rat-tat-tat.But the bullets bounced harmlessly off Tobias’s scales.A rushing roar like the working of massive bellows filled the air. The dragon’s mouth opened, and its giant teeth flashed in warning. Then a blast of fire left the creature’s throat and cut through the twilight, warming Nick’s face despite him being a half mile back from the target.
The security guards erupted in screams. Those caught in direct fire were incinerated instantly. Others on the fringes just burned, throwing themselves on the ground to try to extinguish the flames. Those lucky enough to be missed dropped their guns and ran for cover. The few who kept their shit together fired uselessly at Tobias. The dragon flapped his wings, rose and circled beneath the moon, and dive-bombed the fleeing guards, its mighty chest expanding again before raining fire across the front of the building. What resulted was a runway of sorts, a cleared path outlined by two burning strips of fire.
