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But an incubus demon?

If Devlin regained enough strength to summon his shadows, it might just give us the edge.

No light. No basilisk stare. And without his gaze, Mr. Cadmus would have to take all three of us out with nothing but his bite. And he’d realized it too. I saw it in his stance—the sudden coiling of his muscles, the sharp shift of his weight.

BooDini raised its arms higher as if it could physically shield us. But a bedsheet would be no match for a basilisk.

Mr. Cadmus’s cloak crumpled to the ground, the fabric pooling at his feet like discarded skin. I barely had time to register the ripple of movement beneath his flesh before something deadly emerged.

I snapped my gaze downward, yanking myself out of the basilisk’s eyeline just in time to catch sight of its tail. A barbed, fanned appendage, ridged with thick, overlapping scales that gleamed under the moonlight like polished obsidian. It flexed once, muscles coiling beneath its armored scales. It slitheredtoward us, the thick scaled body slicing a path in the ground with a leathery hiss.

I braced myself for the bite. Eyes clenched shut, every muscle in my body locked tight, I pressed against Devlin in a desperate, futile attempt to shield him, to protect him, when I knew I couldn’t even protect myself.

But the bite never came.

A heartbeat passed.

Then another.

I cracked an eye open, not sure what I would find. I blinked confusedly as my vision was swallowed by gold. My brain scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing as the sound of a knife scraping through leather echoed around me.

A single, wickedly long fang punched through the golden shield, its curved tip glistening with venom. Thick, viscous drops spilled to the earth, sinking into the foliage.

I tilted my head upward, my mind scrambling to make sense of what I was seeing—of what had just saved me.

My eyes traced the vast expanse, following the powerful curve of a bony ridge until it connected with something even more impossible. A colossal, scaled body.

A dragon.

Lobato was a motherfucking dragon.

Her golden eyes locked onto mine, fierce and agonized. Her pupils dilated, then contracted into razor-thin slits as the basilisk venom seeped through her veins, dark tendrils creeping beneath her shimmering hide.

With the last of her strength, she moved. Her great head dipped behind her wing, her body shifting, muscles rippling beneath her golden scales. The air filled with the grotesque tear of flesh being ripped apart, the sickening snap of bones crunching. The basilisk fang—lodged deep in her wing—vanished in an instant. A choked, inhuman shriek tore through the air as Mr. Cadmus’s tail lashed wildly, writhing in agony.

With a single, earth-shaking heave, she hurled him skyward. The basilisk’s blood-streaked body twisted mid-air, its fanned tail thrashing.

The night erupted into fire. A blazing red fireball engulfed the basilisk, consuming him whole. And when the flames finally died, only ash remained, drifting in soft, weightless flakes to the ground.

Lobato let out a single, shuddering breath, her eyes flickering toward mine for the briefest moment before they rolled back into her head. A tremor ran through her massive frame. Her outstretched wing quivered, struggling to hold its weight. Then it gave out.

With a deep, resoundingthud, her colossal body collapsed, shaking the earth beneath us as she crashed to the ground.

***

A low, impressed whistle cut through the night air as the ogre sheriff surveyed the absolute mess before him. His massive, mottled green hand ran along the brim of his sheriff’s hat before he squinted down at his notepad.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly, tapping his pen against the page. “Almost a decade ago, his wife”—he jabbed the pen at the pile of ash that used to be Mr. Cadmus—“accidentally shifted into her basilisk form while your parents were there, and they died from her stare. Then he”—another jab at the dearly incinerated—“decided to frame you for their deaths by spiking candy with his venom because he could exploit your, quote, unquote, ‘addiction to candy.’”

My eye twitched, and I only just swallowed the urge to say“I do not have an addiction to candy. It’s a healthy appreciation.”I managed a nod instead.

“So, then he called you—now under the thrall of his venom—and gave you instructions to cut the brakes so your memory would implicate you. Then he took the car, staged the crash, and called the mortal police instead of us because we would have immediately realized it was supernatural-related.”

“Yup,” I said.

He sighed, flipping a page. “And you were taken into mortal custody, where you confessed and then spent nine years in a human prison.”

“Uh-huh.”