Page 99 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 43

Tempest felt like she was about to throw up. She was sitting in the Batcave, surrounded by piles of copies of her stories and sketches, while Zane and Blaze and Tyr sorted and analyzed and tried to make sense of them.

Every now and then someone would call out a suggestion, for where the hellhounds would come from. The roof. The tunnel entrance in the hillside. The portal room in the tomb.

She’d tried them all. Everything kept changing, and nothing she did make any difference. The hellhounds would be inside. Every time she found a way to write it so they wouldn’t come in one way, she got a vision of them somewhere else.

She’d been trying for over twelve hours, and she couldn’t find a way to stop it.

She glanced over at Tyr. He was on the other side of the room, staying as far away from her as possible. She knew she’d hurt him.

Not just his feelings or his ego. She’d hurt him in his heart, when she’d finally told him why he couldn’t be near her.

He kept her from being able to use her power. He kept her from being able to save people. And it killed him that his being with her made her somehow less than she needed to be.

She didn’t know if he would ever get over it.

Fairy tales were true. She was a princess who’d been taken by a dragon, a good dragon, a dragon prince.

And he wasn’t going to get his happy ending. It wasn’t right.

He looked up and saw her watching him. He was gorgeous, with his dark brown hair and cobalt-blue eyes. And he had a sweet, generous heart. Even now, even though she could see the hurt on his face, he mouthed, “You okay?”

He’d hadn’t come near her, but he kept sending zefirs over with food and water and Coke and ginger ale and chocolate and stomach medicine. Anything she liked or wanted or needed, anything that would keep her going.

So that all she had to think about was fixing this.

And she couldn’t even do that right. She wanted him to hug her, and she wanted to hug him back and she couldn’t.

She nodded. “I’m fine,” she mouthed back.

He sent another zefir over with more ginger ale anyway.

But nothing was going to settle her stomach. Everything felt wrong.

Then there was a huge ‘boom’ from somewhere outside, and the entire cavern shook. It felt like somebody had bombed the house.

Tyr and Zane raced to the new security monitors, that showed all the hallways and public rooms in the lair. The mansion was still standing, but all the hairs on Tempest’s body were standing up.

She scanned the monitors along with them. All the entrances. Nothing.

Then suddenly, the monitor that showed the percentage of magical integrity for Vyrkos’ tomb started to inch downward, ever so slowly.

At the same time, hellhounds began appearing all over the lair.

Upstairs in the ballroom.

At the doors to the elevator, up where Tyr and Zane had their rooms.

In the tunnel near the cliffside.

And then, in Vyrkos’ tomb itself.

“Multiple breaches,” Zane said. “Blaze, stay here with Tempest. Tyr, with me.” They dashed out of the room. In a minute she saw them appear on the security cameras.

Tyr was running down the corridor towards the cliffside tunnel, trying to head off the hellhounds nearest her and Blaze. Zane was in the elevator, heading upstairs.

There weren’t enough of them. There were too many hellhounds, in too many places.