Savage puts his hand up. “I’m on duty for that at all times, and so is Lyle tonight and so is the Devi pack.”
“The basilisk will not come alone,” I clarify, gazing out at them all. “More darkness gathers with him.”
Stacey makes googly eyes at me. “Who, Lia? And where?”
“I will lead him to the place we will fight,” I say, folding my hands on the table. “He wants to see my power. Tonight, we will finally see why I am regina of the Boneweaver pack.”
The room is silent once again. And I revel in it.
In the night, I move.
I descend into something darker than my shark self. Something scarier than the depths of the dark ocean. Something closer to nothing at all. One second, I’m standing on the parapet above the animus dorm, being watched by my mates and friends, and the next, I’m…
It feels like flying, only I have no wings. I’m in the air and under the stars, but there are no wind currents guiding my body.Not even cold on my face. I am not human. Not animal. It’s a wholly dark power, and my emotions feel invisible.
Now I see why my fifth mate is the way he is.
My dragon mate launches into the air behind me, many travellers on his back as his powerful wings sweep, unbalancing the air. It doesn’t affect me though, for I am above such things in my current form.
They follow me as I follow my spirit through the night.Thingscall to me in the air, trying to divert my attention, but my purpose is all-consuming, my focus pinpoint. My heart calls for violence. It calls for the malevolent things in the world. It calls for death. This prickles something in the human deep inside me, but I brush that aside for the moment.
At this point, we split ways. My dragon mate flies northward, and I fly east. I am led towards the gathering dark, as familiar to me as my own soul. A broken piece in the void. A coiled piece of power, ready to strike. There in the dark of the ruins of the old Naga House, he slithers. Like a black, writhing tree-trunk, he moves through the ash, forked tongue tasting the air. I land in a crouch on the dirt ground that was once a lush lawn.
A head snaps towards me, eyes red through the dark.“The snakelet is out to play.”
“There are no games here.” Once again, I become darkness, shooting into the sky like a ball of pure power.
The chase is on.
Ghoul’s power rises into the night, following me northward. In this form, we are both fast, and I am careful to be unpredictable. I zip this way and that, but all the while moving towards one precise location. When we come upon the group of warehouses, lit up with heinous white floodlights, Ghoul cackles in my head. I cannot see Xander, but I know he is there somewhere.
As nothing but shadow, I breeze through the protective bubble of dragon power that forms a boundary around this place, and it’s barely a tickle to me. I come to land on the roof of the central warehouse. In human form, I rise to my feet. Ghoul lands, re-materialising into his near seven-foot form of muscle.
“It’s just you and me, basilisk lord,” I say, feeling my power gathering in my veins.
My father’s general towers over me. “It was never just us, snakelet.” He glances upwards where Xander circles carefully. I can’t see who’s on his back now.
“They have their orders,” I assure him. “They will not interfere. This began with you and me, although I didn’t know it at the time.”
“And yet we find ourselves here. Would you kill me, snakelet, if it came down to it?”
I take the question seriously. Mostly because I’ve already thought about it. If Ghoul were a danger to my mates, to my friends, to everything that I loved, what would I do?
“You are a piece of me,” I say evenly. “And I’ve killed parts of me to become who I am. To save the ones that I love. Yes, Ghoul, I would.”
For a moment—infinitesimal in time, but long enough for a regina—I see a flash of something in those crimson lasers. Something I will think about later, and definitely for the rest of my life.
Ghoul glances over his shoulder to the ground where the serpent military has gathered in the distance. Thenthroughthem comes running Raquel, the wolf anim’s eyes wide, their arms pumping as they sprint across the concrete.
Chapter 69
Savage
Flying high on Xander’s back, I’m jittery with excitement to see my chompy kick basilisk ass tonight, but when Raquel appears sprinting down the open space in front of the warehouses, it feels like my brain is going to explode.
“Raquel!”I shout into her mind.
“Where?”Xander snaps in my head.
