Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(19)

John angled his body toward the couch and took a second, hard look at Jordan as if judging for himself.

Not good enough.

“Right. As. Rain,” Zane repeated, this time clipping his words.

The officer spun back around and shivered, the compulsion rattling his befuddled brain. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered quickly, shuffling toward the door. “Everything seems to be in order here—sorry we bothered you.”

“Not a problem,” Zane said. And then he splayed his fingers, pointing two of them toward the clips; rotated his wrist until his palm was facing up; and crooked those same two fingers inward, drawing the ammo into his hands. He repeated the motion with both guns, in turn. “Your weapons,” he said congenially, shoving the magazines back into the firearms.

The officers looked momentarily confused, but the enthrallment was deeply set. They each retrieved their weapons, Ryan smoothed his shirt, and they mindlessly made their way to the door.

“Wait.” A feeble female voice.

Oh, hell, not now.

Zane did not want to do anything else to Jordan against her will. Hell’s bells, he had already traumatized the wits out of the woman, and he needed her compliance within the next ten days, technically nine, since it was after midnight—dragyras could not be forced to kneel before the dragon lords at the sacred Temple of Seven.

They either submitted of their own free will, or they died that night in their sleep.

And it was up to the female’s dragyri to set that ball in motion, make sure the consecration happened.

“Jordan,” he said in an alluring, placid voice. “Baby, these men were just leaving.” He didn’t put a full compulsion into his voice or his eyes. Rather, he surrounded his words in a mild cloud of confusion, coated them in fog, so to speak, so they would sort of drift around her, neither sticking or landing, but just causing an obstruction. Her mind would be cluttered and confused.

It would buy him a few extra seconds.

“Out, now!” he barked at the officers, staring fixedly at the door in warning.

The men shuffled quickly, like obedient sheep, even as Zane held his breath. When, at last, the door slammed shut behind them, he let out a long, exasperated sigh.

Jordan was sitting up now; her knees were pressed to her chest; her arms were wrapped around her shins, and she was crying like a baby.

Trembling.

Keening.

Damn near whimpering…

Zane ran his heavy hand through his unkempt hair, tucking several errant wisps away from his face, out of his eyes, and slowly made his way toward the couch.

“Angel of mine,” he whispered softly. “Please, don’t cry.”





Chapter Nine

Axe and Levi Saphyrius bounded up the side of the hill, taking the natural-stone steps two at a time on their way to the Sapphire Lair. It was one o’clock in the morning; both dragyri males were eager to take a shower and get to bed. And the sonorous, ambient echo of the sixty-foot waterfall flowing out of the nearby rugged cliffs and flanking the back of the lair called to their nocturnal impulse: Time to get some sleep.

Levi stopped at the dual heavy wooden doors bordered in rough, native stones of sapphire and white, and reached up to retrieve a missive affixed to an iron bracket.

Axe came to a halt behind him. “What’s that?”

Levi shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Looks like it contains an official seal.”

Axe peeked over his lair-mate’s shoulder, caught a glimpse of the red wax-dragon melted on the fold of the page, and curled his lips into a scowl. “The temple?” It wasn’t that he had anything against the gods—or receiving a missive from the seven—but Caleb’s recent punishment was still on everyone’s mind; so the idea of the sacred temple, and anything that came from within it, wasn’t exactly a welcome sight. They could all do without the reminder. “So?” he pressed, waiting as Levi broke the seal and silently read the missive.

Levi grunted, his sapphire-and-black eyes scanning the page. “So, it looks like the message is for Zane.”

Axe frowned. “What now? I mean, he did Lord Ethyron’s bidding, right? So everything should be copasetic.”

Levi nodded distractedly. “Yeah, yeah. Nothing to do with that. It’s a summons. The lords want to see all of the Genesis, the firstborn sons, at the temple on Sunday, by twilight.”

At this, Axe harrumphed. “Hmm. Does it say what for?”

Levi tucked the missive in his front hip pocket and leaned against the door, staring off into the distance, toward the waterfall. “Nope. But whatever it is…bad timing for Zane.”

“No doubt,” Axe said, copping a lean of his own against an adjacent stone pillar that supported the roof of the porch. “Wonder what this is all about.”

It wasn’t very often that the Genesis got together, mostly because the males identified more strongly with their lair-mates. Just the same, they had a special bond—and in a way, a special purpose—that set them apart from the rest: From the beginning of time, as far back as the Dragyr could remember, the dragon lords had always been—they had always existed.

They simply were.

Seven omniscient gods with the powers of creation, life and death, and immortality entwined in their natures. But their existence had been lonely, without a greater purpose.

According to legend, they had created the Dragons Domain and the Temple of Seven. They had hung the sun and the moon, created the seven sacred stones and the seven consecrated lairs; but that hadn’t been enough. They had needed more. They had wanted sons and daughters.