Page 107 of Dragon 7

What? Are you fucking serious? You came to us, brother.

The engine of the plane came back on. The roar of it rolled across the field even through the noise of the war. The propellers began their slow turn. The body of the plane shuddered as the engines woke, and the wheels began their first half-rotation against the grass.

He’s running again.

“No, brother!” Kenji broke into a run, rushing forward into the chaos. “You will not escape tonight."

Fast, the five of us moved as one body across the field toward the plane.

Kenji roared, “Goryū, stop him!”

And before Akiro could disappear into the hatch, he froze two steps away, blocking his men and shocking me to my core.

What? Well. . .point two for the dragon-shadow. I may need one of my own.

“We’ve got him.” Kenji picked up his pace.

We do.

Chapter sixteen

Screaming Torches

Kenji

Goryū had Akiro pinned.

My dragon-shadow coiled across the top of the plane like a black storm laid flat, and from his open jaw, shadow-fire poured down on the hatch where Akiro stood frozen two steps from the door.

The flames held no heat, but Akiro's body had locked. His muscles seized. His kusarigama hung dead in his grip. The chain pooled at his boots on the metal step.

His five guards stood jammed behind him on the stairs. They saw their commander paralyzed. They saw empty air above him. Their heads snapped left and right looking for the threat, and they found none, and the confusion on their faces was its own weapon.

We sprinted forward. The five of us—me, Hiro, Reo, and the twins—crossed the field in a line with my guards flanking wide on both sides.

My chest burned with Nyomi's rage and grief through the bond, and right there in the middle of a dead sprint and watching Goryū blast Akiro, I understood what she had truly given me tonight.

Control.

Without her blood in that bowl, without her mouth on my palm, without the ritual she had somehow found the strength to complete, Akiro would be inside that plane. The hatch would be sealed. The engines would carry him and my father into the dark sky, and I would be standing on an island full of corpses watching them disappear.

The war would continue again.

But not tonight. Thank you, Tora.

So close to the stairs now, those thoughts were all I allowed myself. One beat of gratitude for my Tiger. Then I shoved it into the same place where I kept her face and her laugh and the life I wanted, and I aimed myself at the stairs.

Totoro's fuel shifted in the tank against my chest. The hybrid butane and gel mix sloshed heavy. The barrel pointed forward.

“Watch out!” I pulled the trigger guard back and the ignition caught.

Twenty-five feet of flame erupted from Totoro's mouth.

Hiro roared. “Fuck yeah!!!”

The Dragon's breath hit the first cluster of Akiro's soldiers ahead of me and turned them into ragged screaming torches. Their weapons clattered to the grass. Bright flames ate their jackets, their vests, their pants. It clung to their skin, dancing and twirling. Bright at the edges and dark at the core.

Smoke rose.