Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(73)
Zane took a cautious step back, almost as if the creature’s age had impressed him, and he dropped low into a defensive stance, raised both arms at his sides, and extended his claws, pointing forward. “Your shadow is strong,” he observed. “But not strong enough.”
In the blink of an eye, ten red flames shot from the tips of Zane’s fingers, each one crisscrossing the next like an X and gathering power at the intersection. The potent amalgamation struck the shadow—it struck Dan—right in the heart.
The attorney howled and flew backward, slamming violently into the bunker wall. And then his chest rose outward like an inflatable balloon, leaking some kind of dark green sludge. The goo dripped on the tile floor, sizzled and popped, and then Dan’s chest reversed and contracted, inverting in the opposite direction. His breastplate closed, and he took a long, orgasmic, deep breath. “Ahhhh…” He shivered, as if in ecstasy. “You are powerful, Zane Saphyrius. This pairing—our romance—will be exquisite.”
Zane didn’t reply to the taunt.
He dove forward, rotated into a half summersault, and soared upward to the bunker ceiling. Then he took three steps along the roof and came crashing down, landing behind the shadow-walker. Just as he had done that night in Jordan’s apartment, he reached around the pagan’s shoulder, ripped into his throat, and opened a spout of arterial spray.
Dan’s hands shot up to his windpipe, and he began to choke on the blood, gurgling like a broken spigot. His demonic red eyes faded back to deep brown, and his face grew pale and ashen.
Jordan pushed to her knees, still on the couch, and clutched her hair in her hands, trembling. “Oh, God… Oh, no… Oh, please! You’re killing him, Zane. You’re destroying Dan.” A plaintive sob escaped her throat—this was all happening much too quickly. She didn’t have time to process—she only knew that murder was wrong, and even the worst of souls could find redemption. Surely Dan was not without his saving graces. He prosecuted criminals for a living, for heaven’s sake! There had to be something…something redeemable…something Zane could do. “Please, dragyri,” she pleaded breathlessly. “Please, don’t kill him like this—not even for me. He has a brother, he has a mom, he has a life that makes a difference…even if he’s lost his way.”
The feral shout—the angry roar—that emanated from Zane’s throat would stay with Jordan forever. She would never forget that sound as he glared at her with unconcealed rage and abject disappointment stamped into his predatory features. “You would die for him? You would risk my life…and yours…so he could live?”
“Not for him,” she argued. “For what’s right! For justice. I don’t believe in execution without a trial. I believe each soul is innocent…until proven guilty.”
Zane’s laughter was purely sardonic. “Oh, my dragyra—I adore you so, but you have so very much to learn. The innocent are innocent. The guilty are guilty. One does not need a human trial when one can see into the soul. And one does not toy with a shadow-walker.”
Jordan gulped.
She knew they were in grave danger.
She knew that whatever was animating Dan Summers’ body, it was evil to its core. Still, she didn’t want him to die. She just couldn’t watch it happen. She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “I am human, Zane. If you despise us all so much, then you also despise me.”
His eyes closed briefly, and he angled his head in annoyance. Then he dipped down into a squat, reached inside his boot, and retrieved an archaic stiletto, the handle carved into the shape of a dragon. With infinite precision and lightning quick speed, he rose to his full, intimidating height, grasped the attorney by the scalp, and sliced something away from the nape of his neck, the bloody flesh plopping on the ground. Then he drove his fist through Dan’s heaving back, and pulled something macabre out of him—it looked like a shadowy spine, a dark, inky impression of thirty-three vertebrae: cervical, thoracic, lumbar—sacral and coccygeal.
Dan’s body slumped to the ground, face first, seemingly absent of life, as Zane snapped the shadowy backbone in two, tossed both halves across the bunker, and knelt over the unconscious torso. His mouth opened wider than any mouth should, and a searing, oscillating, silver-blue flame bathed Dan’s skull and his back in fire. Then Zane tossed him over like a carcass of meat, and bathed his throat in the same.
The assistant district attorney sputtered.
He jackknifed off the floor and screamed.
And then he panted like a fish out of water, trying to catch his breath.
Zane met Jordan’s gaze with a steely stare of his own, and he nodded before scanning the floor for the spine. “We need to get out of here, and fast!” he barked. “You need to go back through the portal with one of my brothers.”
Before she could scramble off the couch or reply, there was a harrowing squeal in the bunker—a high-pitched wail, like a siren—and then all of a sudden, the separate halves of the shadowy spine began to slither across the tiles. They moved faster than Jordan’s eyes could track—the two separate ends came together…
They merged.
And then they rose like a ghost from a shallow grave, transforming into a hulking tower of darkness, hatred, and rage…
A living, breathing shadow.
Jordan inhaled sharply, fearing she might lose her dinner, and her heart sank in her chest—the shadow was stretching to the ceiling, filling out the bunker, and lumbering slowly forward.