The Dragon Legion Collection(94)

Tisiphone’s naked body was smeared with blood and perhaps something darker. The smell of her was foul. Her hair writhed, and Aura saw it was composed of glistening black snakes. When she laughed, her rotted teeth were visible. Her fingernails were yellow and her breasts sagged low. She was ancient and withered and should have commanded sympathy, but the fury of her expression and the large bat wings sprouting from her back inspired only horror.

When Tisiphone leapt toward Thad, with all the vigor of youth, Aura feared her dragon would not survive. Thad suffered from no such doubt. Aura saw him change shape and leap into the air in his dragon form, roaring as he lunged at Tisiphone with talons bared, more than ready to fight.

* * *

Jorge huddled behind a rock, sniffing. He had a keen sense of smell, keener even than that of the other Pyr and Slayers. His senses had sharpened when he’d drunk the Dragon’s Blood Elixir. Now, he inhaled deeply of the dying pilgrim’s scent, trying to identify the man’s illness.

It was fierce, whatever it was, a kind of pestilence that was rotting his body from the inside out. It had worked insidiously, leaving the man oblivious to the true state of his health, only revealing itself when there was no hope for him. Jorge admired that kind of stealthy assault.


It wasn’t cancer.

It wasn’t plague.

It wasn’t smallpox or influenza or SARS or ebola. It wasn’t any of the familiar suite of illnesses that plagued mankind in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

It was, perhaps, something that had been lost and forgotten over the centuries, much as the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors should have been.

That intrigued Jorge. He had no doubt it was contagious, given the right circumstances, because all living organisms multiplied to survive. He had no doubt that he would be spared whatever foulness it might do to a body, both because his body was Slayer not human, and because he had sipped of the Dragon’s Blood Elixir, the source of immortality for his kind. He could recover from any illness or injury, in time.

And if this one took him a while to recover, it just might be worth the price.

Because Jorge knew that the darkfire wasn’t done with him. It had some mission, some quest that would ultimately favor the Pyr. The darkfire was closely associated with them, after all, and favored their efforts over those of the Slayers. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the darkfire had swept him back in time to see him eliminated forever, for example.

But Jorge wasn’t that easy to eliminate.

Plus Viv Jason was here. He guessed that she had somehow been created in this journey of Drake’s Pyr to the past, but that meant she had to be flung into the future. He knew her in the early twenty-first century, so somehow the darkfire had to get her there.

Jorge intended to tag along.

In fact, he intended to take a piece of this pilgrim with him when he went. Whatever disease plagued this pilgrim might be just what the Slayers needed to exterminate the human race for once and for all.

The remaining Pyr would probably die of loneliness.

Jorge couldn’t wait. He crept out of the shadow of his rock in his salamander form, watched the Pyr fight the creature that Viv Jason had become. He judged the distance to the pilgrim, mustered his strength and waited for his moment.

* * *

The hag was strong.

The smell of her wasn’t the worst of it.

Thad had known there was something wrong with the red-haired woman, because her scent had seemed off. He’d sensed that she was hiding something, but hadn’t been sure of what until she changed shape.

He guessed that this guise was her reality, and she thought it wise to hide this form from casual view. She was hideous and terrifying, the sight of her so horrifying that he’d almost recoiled and taken a blow. In this form, the scent of her was an assault in itself, a horrible mixture of blood and excrement. Thad lunged toward her, wanting to defend the others, even as she leapt at him.

He breathed dragonfire, but the flames didn’t stop her. He smelled her hair burning and heard her manic laughter at the same time. She darted through the flames, blood running from her eyes, and jumped at Thad. She locked her arms around his neck, cackling into his face. He was appalled by the feel of her skin. It was cold and clammy, like the skin of a corpse, and when he tried to toss her aside, his talons sank through the soft rot of her body.

She beat at him with her wings, kicked at him with her legs and spat in his eye. It was against his nature to injure an elderly woman, even one so awful as this, but revulsion convinced Thad that she needed no concession from him.

Thad bellowed with fury as he took flight. He guessed this was a fight to the death and wanted this creature away from the others. Even if she killed him, he wanted it to be difficult for her to claim anyone else. He tore the hag free of his neck and cast her into the air before him, exhaling a ferocious plume of dragonfire at her. The flame burned hotter and whiter than he expected and he knew Aura was helping him by fanning the flames.

The hag laughed and turned in the air, flying hard against the wind that would have driven her out to sea. That was Aura again, and Thad was encouraged that together, he and his mate might win the fight. Thad pursued the hag, breathing fire all the while. He heard the screams of the black snakes as they were fried and smelled her skin burning, but she didn’t surrender.

She dropped suddenly like a stone, and too late, Thad realized she did it to duck out of the wind. In an instant, she was behind him and latching on to his back. He felt her nails dig in to his shoulders and spun in an effort to shake her free.