Marjorie Liu - Within the Flames

“I’m ripe,” she said. “Are you ready for me?”

The witch strode toward her. “I offered you a chance.”

“No.”

“I meant it, you know. Both of us, together. Yes, you would have tried to kill me eventually, but two Cruor Venator s working in tandem? That has not been seen in a thousand years.”

“I can think of better dreams.”

“I can’t,” said Georgene, with an oddly regretful smile. “There is nothing sweeter than drinking a life and riding that power. I took Nikola with me, and now she rests in here.” Her hand pressed against her heart. “Forever.”

“You won’t take me,” Lyssa whispered. “Or Eddie, or anyone else.”

“Ah,” she whispered, dark eyes glittering. “You are untrained. You are young, and have not fed on a full life. I can feel that. You have no chance, Lyssa. And yet. . when I take your life, it will be the life of a full blood Cruor Venator. . which is far more powerful than if I had just killed you before your first murder.”

Eddie rose from helping Roland, and stepped forward. “You won’t touch her.”

She smiled. “You’ll be next. And when I’m done, you won’t remember Lyssa. You won’t remember yourself.”

That threat. That promise.

For a moment, Lyssa remembered her mother, chained and bleeding. Her father, descending in a cloud of fire.

Fire burned in her hands. Inside, the dragon simmered with such terrible rage she forgot everything but the need, and hunger, to protect the man behind her.

My mate.

Lyssa took one powerful, bounding stride — and grabbed Georgene’s head between her hands. Claws pierced her scalp, drawing blood. Blood that Lyssa scraped across her tongue.

The reaction was immediate, and overwhelming. Power roared through her veins with such force she thought her skin would split — like a cocoon, split — or the skin of a snake — revealing her, transformed. Unrecognizable. Alien.

She didn’t care. Nothing mattered but that taste of power, which felt like the purest form of infinity — like heaven after a hard death. Impossible and eternal.

I will never give this up, came the unbidden thought . I will kill to keep it.

And, just like that, the moment ended. One terrible thought was all it took to snap Lyssa free and send her slamming back to earth in a tumble of fear and hunger, and determination.

The Cruor Venator snarled and shifted shape into a leopard. The transformation took a heartbeat, and suddenly Lyssa was on her back, fighting to fend off an enraged 150-pound cat with hate and hunger in its black eyes. Claws gouged her stomach.

Eddie appeared behind the leopard — and in a burst of raw strength, slid his arms around its neck and hauled backward. Lyssa scrambled forward instead of away, slashing her own claws across the leopard’s belly, screaming in fury and disgust as she tried to gut the Cruor Venator.

The leopard twisted, knocking Eddie on his side. Lyssa grabbed her tail, yanking the beast away from him — and barely jumped back in time to keep from being cut across the throat. Instead of pressing the attack, the Cruor Venator turned again on Eddie.

She’s going to kill him first.

Ruthless resolve shot straight into Lyssa’s heart. Pain ate at her right arm, muscles contorting with power, but this time she embraced it, opening her soul to the dragon, accepting that other half of her without hesitation.

Golden light flooded her vision. Hot as the sun, and bright.

Lyssa’s body contorted, expanding, her skin stretching until she thought she would explode from the force of the dragon fighting to emerge. Everything twisted — muscles and bone, the shape of the world — even the slant of light.

Wings erupted against her back. Bursting with fire.

Furniture scattered around her. The floor burned. She looked down, as though from very far away, and saw Eddie staring at her, his body surrounded in flames. Admiration and wonderment filled his eyes.

The Cruor Venator still wore her stolen leopard skin. But her gaze was human and dark. . and full of fear.

Not that it mattered. She was hardly a mouthful, for a dragon.

Which Lyssa discovered. When she ate her in one bite.

Blood flooded her mouth, bone crunching. The taste was awful, and not because she was eating another person. The rot of Georgene’s spirit was thick and slimy, coating the inside of her mouth and throat — and then her soul — in such filth that Lyssa thought eating shit from a sewer would have been better.

And then the power hit her — memories soaked from blood — and the world went black.

“Fuck me,” muttered Roland, as the dragon ate the witch. Eddie, who had never much cared for swearing, had to agree.

Fuck me was an appropriate response, along with Oh, my God .

Lyssa’s transforming into a dragon had been awe-inspiring: golden and hot, a shimmer of light that clung to her skin as scales erupted, and her body stretched with furious power.

But Lyssa as a dragon. . was the stuff of fairy tales and children’s dreams on starry nights. A dragon, who in older days, would inspire quests and long journeys — searching for gold, when the only treasure worth finding would be the dragon’s heart itself. Living, beating, and full of love.

God, he loved her.

The ceiling cracked above her head. Eddie had to dance backward as her wings nearly knocked him into the window. Roland stayed on the floor, breathing hard, weak from blood loss. Eddie crawled close, thinking about how stupid he’d been to stay so angry at the older man, these last few years. Seeing Roland wounded, tied up, in pain — felt too much like watching his father die for a second time. Making him realize just how much he still cared. He tried instinctively not to feel anything at all, to bury those emotions, but the well was already too full with Lyssa. The cap he tried to screw on wouldn’t fit.

“Hey,” Eddie said to the hurt man, just as Lyssa let out a strangled roar. Blood dripped from between her long white teeth—

— and then she collapsed.

Eddie dragged Roland out of the way before her long, scaled neck would have crushed him. He kept moving, half-carrying the older man as fire shimmered along her skin. Fortunately, she began to shift shape — and in moments had returned to her human body: naked and on fire.

“Roland,” he said.

“Go,” he snapped, sagging against the wall. “Hurry.”

Eddie raced to Lyssa’s side and threw her over his shoulder. The fire intensified when he touched her, and he felt his own power rise as he ran down the stairs to the cage.

He had barely closed the door behind them when she exploded. Moments later, he followed — and in those first few seconds his mind opened to hers, and a rush of emotion not his own flowed through him: fear and longing, and anger.

So much anger. Lyssa’s anger. He glimpsed memories — blood and death, snow and a forest in moonlight — and he knew that she was experiencing the murders of her parents all over again, this time in the body and mind of the Cruor Venator. From the perspective of the murderer.

He fought to reach her through their bond, struggling against a morass of spiritual slime that tugged at him with sticky tentacles. Lyssa huddled in front of him, a beacon of light amidst disease, and when he finally reached her, it was like touching the sun on a summer morning, clean and white-hot, and full of promise.

I’m here, he told her. Hold on to me.

He wrapped wings around her, wings of fire, and held her within the flames. Lyssa held him, as well, with a close, hard strength that bound their spirits together — closer than flesh, closer than blood — bound in spirit, together, as one.