Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(72)
Zane grit his teeth.
Every instinct in his body told him to go to his lair-mates’ aid, but they would have to fend off the enemy themselves. Zane didn’t have a moment to waste. Dan wasn’t just reaching out to the underworld for assistance—thanks to his affinity for flesh-and-blood art, the fool had opened himself up to possession.
Zane rounded the hallway and shot to the top of the stairs, just as Jace, to his right, and Levi, on his left, took out two more human guards, then spun around to face a trio of slinking, translucent shadows emerging from the walls. Zane kept his focus straight ahead, bounding down the stairs in one lithe leap and shooting past Nakai, who had the heel of his boot on a human’s throat, while emptying an M4 carbine into the torso of a shade.
Holy spirits of fire; this shit was getting deep!
And while the judge’s estate was secluded, ensconced behind a wall, it might be hard to hide a shadow-dragyri war. “Screw it!” Zane shouted as he approached the stainless steel vault and glanced over his shoulder at Nakai. “The Diamond Lair has the night off. Call ’em if you need ’em.” He planted both fists around the solid steel wheel and tried to crank it through the locks—he didn’t have time to listen and discern, to feel for an encoded password.
The disk came off the door.
“Damnit,” he snarled, stepping back and balling up his fists.
He coated his hand with scales, hardened the individual layers, and began to punch in rapid succession, like a horizontal jackhammer, throwing all of his supernatural strength into every caustic blow. The outer panel creaked and groaned, and the inner plate folded inward—but the son of a bitch still held.
Zane took three giant steps backward, called on his inner fire, and hurled a bright orange flame at the center of the door, torching his way through the metal. When the entire panel began to glow a pale yellow-red, he leaped into the air and drop-kicked it open. The hatch flew off the frame—large steel bolts scattering in every direction—even as Zane rushed to get in front of all the debris, and keep it from hitting Jordan.
His dragyra was perched on the floor, behind Dan, her body quaking with fright. There was one streak of blood—drawn from her forehead and along her nose—but thank the gods, she had not been painted with the entire insignia.
Her eyes grew wide and her jaw fell slack as she met Zane’s seeking gaze and scooted frantically backward. And that’s when Dan began to convulse, his body taken over by a pagan.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jordan watched in absolute horror as the door to the bunker flew open, and thick, iron spikes scattered in her direction. She threw up both hands to cover her face, but the reaction wasn’t necessary.
Zane was there in an instant.
Blocking the bolts, shielding her body, hovering over her cowering form in a rage.
His enigmatic gold-blue eyes were glowing in his skull; his upper lip was pulled back in a snarl; and his fangs had descended from the roof of his mouth, making him look like a human jackal. He spun around to face Dan, and his biceps visibly contracted.
He was going to tear Dan’s head off.
Despite her terror and confusion, Jordan shot to her feet and tried to dive between them. “No! Zane, don’t!” The air left her body in a whoosh as he caught her momentum with an open palm, stopped her trajectory, and shoved her onto the couch.
It was the first time he had ever laid hands on her in an aggressive fashion, and she landed with a thud, quickly sat up, and prepared to try again.
She could not let Zane kill Dan.
No matter what her ex-lover had done, he was there because she had pleaded with him for help—begged him to come to her rescue.
A spine-tingling hiss reverberated throughout the bunker as Dan’s neck began to undulate like a snake’s.
What the hell?
The assistant district attorney suddenly stood a whole foot taller, and he held his arms out to the side. “Good evening, son of dragons.”
Whose voice was that?
It was foreign, ancient, and dripping with evil.
“Do you have a name, shadow-walker?” Zane bit out.
Dan smiled like a fiend, and his gums were bleeding, his teeth were jagged, and his tongue had a fork in the tip.
Jordan screamed.
“Stay back, dragyra!” Zane commanded. “This is not your lover anymore.” His words were as acidic as his tone.
Her lover…
Dan was not her lover, not anymore. What did Zane think was going on? She knew that his dragon was wholly possessive, instinctively territorial, and in this moment, he was also innately savage. “It’s not what you think,” she muttered.
“No,” Zane argued. “It’s not what you think, dragyra. Your friend is a member of the Cult of Hades. He worships a pagan king by the name of Drakkar—the sworn enemy of the seven dragon lords: their estranged, primordial sibling—and he has invited Lord Drakkar’s sycophants, his shadow-walkers, to join us this night.”
Dan bowed at the waist, and affixed his now blood-red eyes on Zane. “Names…names…what’s in a name: Zanaikeyros, child of Saphyrius.” He laughed like an escaped lunatic. “But if you insist on knowing the identity of the one who will silence your soul, you may call me Traylyn Zerachi, born in the time of Romulus Augustus, the infamous Roman emperor—I have waited many lifetimes to make the acquaintance of a Genesis Son.”