Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(62)
And then his mouth dropped open.
He took me from my apartment, brought me into his world, and I have been “with” him ever since. He has no intentions of letting me go, and I have no clear avenue of escape.
Dan swept a trembling hand through his hair and clenched a handful of locks in his fist, above his neck. He began to pace in tight circles around the elevator as he continued to read even faster. “Oh, shit…oh, shit…oh, shit.”
His eyes came to the last line—please trust me…please believe me…please help me—he took three steps backward and virtually slammed into the elevator wall, slinking against it to support his weight.
He needed to catch his breath.
This guy—whoever he was—had Jordan.
She was free to move back and forth through her life—what the hell?—but she was doing it under duress…as a captive.
None of it made any sense, and he only knew one thing—he would kill the son of a bitch! He would grab the nearest armed security guard, march right into that courtroom, and yank Jordan out of there, away from that desk. And if that bastard dared to make a move, he would snatch the security guard’s weapon and litter the scumbag’s body with holes.
Consequences be damned.
He started to hit the ninth floor button, to return to courtroom B-9, when his common sense kicked in.
Wait.
No!
What had Jordan said?
You cannot confront this guy on your own; there’s no way you will win. Believe me—nothing is as it seems. He has the power to obliterate you and everyone around you in the space of a heartbeat.
Dan repeated the pertinent words: “Nothing is as it seems.” This was pure, unadulterated madness, but he couldn’t take the risk: not with Jordan’s life, and not with the lives of all the innocent civilians in the building. Hell, this was an active hostage situation. He needed the assistance of a special response team, perhaps ATF or SWAT. Hell’s bells, did he need a bomb squad, too—did he need to clear the building and have it swept for explosives?
No.
Hell no.
That would only tip the bastard off, and he might slip away. Jordan might be lost.
Dan needed to assemble a highly tactical team who could strike hard, fast, and with targeted precision…
He stuffed the letter back in the envelope, dropped his head in his hands, and closed his eyes.
He needed to think this through.
f
Drakkar Hades strolled along the gothic castle battlements, gazing down at the moat several stories below, and for the first time in centuries, he thought about the past.
The ancient, primordial past.
A time before creation, fourteen billion years before the universe as we know it existed.
He thought about the swirling mass of evolving, kinetic energy in its most basic form, the black hole full of hot, dense, burning gas—energy that rotated, fed on itself, then expanded—until that critical moment happened, and the quantum fluctuation expanded.
Poppycock! he thought, revising the accepted version of ancient history. It didn’t expand—it exploded! He should know; he was there.
The mass that would one day yield the seven dragon lords and the most powerful king of all the pagan realm had divided out of that mass due to conflicting consciousness. Everything—absolutely everything—had been there in its most basic, thought-impulse form: love, hate, desire, sin, joy, purity, hope, and destruction.
Everything that encompassed light and shadow had coexisted in that ancient mass.
And then, somehow along the way, the impulses had developed consciousness, and the consciousness had developed minds, and Lord Drakkar Hades had garnered a clear, distinct impression of the Self.
Of his…self.
And he had known from that first moment of inception that he was different from the rest. That all the errant, destructive, divisive vibrations were more pleasing than the rest—that he could feed on them, feed from them, and create an army, unto itself, that gave rise to the darkness and voice to the shadows.
That he could be the Chosen One, albeit self-appointed: Father of the pagan realm.
And at the same time, almost simultaneously, seven other conscious energies had emerged, ranging from a step above his own dark shadow, to the highest form of light. It had been—and still remained—unacceptable: Any trace of light was too stark, too bright, too foul to retain within the mass.
Darkness needed to escape.
It needed to break out.
The quantum fluctuation needed to explode so its individual vitalities could be free…and untainted.
And that was truly how it had happened: how Drakkar Hades and the seven dragon lords had burst forth from their own cosmic “Big Bang” and into the unformed universe, where they began to create their own dimensions as powerful, original lords.
The demon-shade sighed. He stopped strolling and leaned against a dark gray parapet, exquisitely adorned with a beautiful medieval sword—there was a witch’s pentacle etched into the pommel; a reversed numerical seven inscribed in gold below the cross guard; and the tail of the seven was outlined in permanent blood, extending along the length of the blade. He crossed his long, spindly arms across his sunken chest and licked his reedy lips as he brought his attention back to the present day and time: the state of the worlds right now.
As Father of the pagan realm, he ruled the underworld with an iron fist, and the Temple of Seven ruled the higher domain. And now—and now—after all these millennia, he had a chance to strike back at his original kin, the brothers who had been born that fateful day: Lord Dragos, Lord Ethyron, Lord Saphyrius, Lord Amarkyus, Lord Onyhanzian, Lord Cytarius, and Lord Topenzi.