I turned to stare at her, this imprisoned woman wearing a dress straight out of the disco era, with hair that probably hadn’t been cut in all those years. A woman who hadn’t seen the sun since before the era of hair bands. Before my birth.
She had just set off an alarm to warn her captors that we were trying to free her.
What the actual fuck?
CHAPTER 30
Acrash behind me almost sent me leaping into Davin’s arms.
The man in the cage behind me had thrown himself into the thick glass, ragged claws extended, and even fangs showing behind his lips. “You crazy bitch. They’re trying to get us out. What the fuck are you thinking?”
“That they’re barely fit to kiss Tadhg’s feet. Only one of them is even a dragon, and he’s a baby. They couldn’t hope to win and get us out of here.” She stepped toward the glass, glaring at him and flicking out claws as though a real confrontation was possible when the two of them were separated permanently by two sheets of glass and four feet of air between those. “If the only thing they’re going to find here is death, I might as well turn them in and get an extra meal out of the situation.”
Wow.
That was so super fucked-up.
At my feet, the guard stirred, and he muttered something about summoning “the great dragon,” which somehow sounded even more ridiculous coming from a half-conscious bleeding guy than it had from either Caspian or the guard outside.
I looked up at Davin, frowning. “Why the hell does everyone keep calling my asshole grandfather the great dragon? He can’t even turn into a dragon.” I looked at the woman, whose eyes had rounded as she stared at me. “Can he?”
She looked to either side of herself, like maybe I’d been speaking to that other dragon in her cell, but then finally, shook her head.
That was good.
Reassurance that Tadhg couldn’t turn into a dragon and eat people or something. Well, assuming she knew what she was talking about, which was debatable, since she was a prisoner.
The door we’d come through banged back open, and guards spilled in from the hallway.
It was only a handful of guys in camo, no dragon at all, unless I was missing something.
Unless Tadhg was just another gravy seal.
Considering Sexton and his dapper suits, even if he weirded them up with sweater vests, and my father, and his apparently very fashionable tastes in all things, I doubted that very much. Guys like that were convenient tools for rich men, but they would never be on the inside of the cult.
Davin spun to face them, a near-feral gleam in his eyes, and I could feel Twist wriggle her way up, wanting out of her pocket. “Is it time for fighting, Father?”
The female dragon in the cell scoffed at the sight of her adorable face. “Seriously? You brought a tiny kitten to face the greatest dragon ever born?” She turned to the man in the cell across from her, and motioned to me. “See? An extra meal is a much better choice than some kid who brings fucking kittens to fights.”
I just lifted an unimpressed brow at her, then reached up and pulled Twist the rest of the way out of her pocket. “Sure thing, That Which Stalks. Go eat some sad little men’s rights activists.”
Leaning over, I set her down on the cold stone floor.
The guys in camo all stopped, staring at the kitten, then up at me, like I was entirely out of my damn mind, which...fair. It probably seemed a little insulting, at best, to be threatened with two pounds of fuzzy, clumsy black fur with bright blue eyes and a tiny “mew” that was barely audible over the noise of the alarm in the background.
That tiny mew turned into a low growl, though, and in two deep breaths, two-pound Twist turned into two-hundred pound That Which Stalks the Darkest of Nights.
One guy screamed, turned, and ran back down the hallway.
Yeah, that seemed about right for this kind of guy. Sensible for one of them, even.
Another lifted a hand with a gun in it, though, and Davin took that opportunity to step forward, grabbing his gun hand and just...twisting it all the way around, like it was a screw cap and not a body part. The man screamed, and a series of cracks filled the air. Davin took hold of the gun and removed it from the man’s hand, but when he let go of the arm, the whole man fell limp to the ground.
Suddenly, I was less worried about having left Caspian to all the men we’d seen above. If this was what they had to offer, he was going to be just fine.
Twist lunged at another man in the doorway, and Davin...expertly removed the magazine from the gun, tossing one in one direction and the other in another, then smiled at the next man waiting to have his ass kicked.
Where had Davin learned how to handle guns? He was a tech guy, not a soldier.
