This time, he grew fangs and claws, raking them down her side. All I could do was picture my tiny innocent two-pound kitten being injured, and I rushed forward, claws growing on my own hands.
But no, claws weren’t what was going to stop him.
I didn’t need those. I had a fucking spear, didn’t I?
And maybe we’d believed that the spear was more about a concept than an actual weapon, but that didn’t have to be the case. So I remembered that moment when the raven had given it to me, and the feel of it in my hands.
And there it was.
Like I’d been wielding a spear my whole life, I thrust it between Tadhg and Twist, without so much as scratching her.
Him, I was pretty sure I scratched. At the very least, his fancy suit would never be the same. He broke away from her as he fell on his ass, and she retreated a few more paces, limping and bleeding now.
“You stay the fuck away from my cat,” I told him. “You and yours have hurt her enough. Your fucking asshole son hit her with his car already.”
Tadhg gave me that manic crazed smile again, and motioned to the next cell back. “Oh no. My asshole son has been right here for the last thirty years. Him and the pathetic weak one. The only one out there in the world has been the useful one.” He pressed up to his feet, giving a lunge toward Twist that actually made her fall back again, then motioned to both sides of the cells next to himself.
The third set of cells from the door.
Was this where he’d kept my father for most of my life?
But no.
Both cells were still occupied.
“I thought they would like to spend their last days together. Terribly kind of me, don’t you think?”
He was inching toward the panels that would allow him to murder the people in this third set of cells, when I truly got a look at those people. On the right, a ragged man with long light brown hair and watery blue eyes, looking as exhausted and frightened as the woman in the previous cell.
On the left, was Sexton.
I rushed him, and while he tried to get to the panels before me, I was younger, and faster, and frankly, hadn’t been jumped by both a vampire and a giant panther-creature already. I got there first and turned to face him.
Then, I spun the spear so it was facing him as well, and he backed away, his hands in the air. He still had his claws out, and his mouth was now full of sharp pointy teeth rather than flat human ones. Scales even rippled across his skin. Not the red-orange-gold shades that mine had been when I’d shifted, but pure coal black ones.
It reminded me of how Arthur had said he could see auras. I wondered if Tadhg’s aura would be as black as his soul and scales. If that color had something to do with his behavior.
No, that was my unconscious biases talking, since Twist was entirely black, and she was one of the purest souls I had ever met.
“You’re not getting anything out of this,” I told Tadhg.
He snorted, dismissive and not interested in actually talking to me. “You’ll fail, and I’ll go back to work. Do you truly think you’re going to stop me? I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, and no one has even tried yet. I will finish my machine. You’ve just set me back a bit, since I had to kill Shella, and I’ve lost your idiotic father. I’ll kill you, and I’ll get him back.”
Behind him, back at the entrance to the room, since we’d switched positions, Davin was moving. He’d gotten down on all fours, and he was rubbing the back of his head, but he was okay.
What was more, as I watched, he turned his head up to glare at Tadhg.
Oh yes. This was good.
This was very good.
I just needed my grandfather to not notice that Davin was coming for him.
“Good luck with that,” I said, injecting as much scorn into my voice as I could. I thought I did pretty well, copying Sexton and my mother. Speaking of whom...“My mother is going to keep him locked up in her house from now till the end of his life. He’s never getting out without a dozen bodyguards again. And you might be overconfident about what dragons can do, but a dozen vampires? Or even a dozen humans? They’ll fuck your shit up. Mother actually hires trained people, unlike you. And then? My mother will burn your life down. People keep telling me she fucked Rome up, so why not?”
He turned his nose up. “Just those pathetic fellows involved in her sad little war. They were right anyway. What man leaves a kingdom todaughters? That can’t be allowed to stand. They were right to take it away and kill the lot.”
I still had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, but I raised an eyebrow at him. “Spoken like a jackass who’s never really known a woman in his life. Which is even more sad considering how old you are.”
