Page 20 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Amaya

Trace entered the grand dining room where the council elders were hearing the report from those three foolish younglings who’d nearly gotten themselves slaughtered by the vampires. Naturally, the younglings kept quiet about their failed engagement with the vampires. And since they’d listened to me after I’d managed to jump into Victor’s vapid thoughts, and they’d succeeded in flying back to the village without any of them dying, I decided to keep their foolish behavior secret.

Celestina tried to follow Trace into the dining room. “The vampires don’t mean us harm,” she had the audacity to proclaim. “I need to speak up for them.”

I caught her arm. “Maybe when we can trust you, you’ll be allowed in there.”

The door clicked closed behind Trace.

Her amber-brown and jade-green eyes glared at the hand I’d put on her. “Are you going to use your talons to hurt me again?”

“Only if you decide to do something foolish,” I answered, not loosening my hold. I leaned toward her and breathed out a wreath of smoke through my nostrils. “I don’t trust you.”

She didn’t quail like I’d expected. With her eyes still as hard as the mismatched gemstones they resembled, she placed her hand over mine. I suspected she was going to try to pry my hand from her arm. Well, that wouldn’t work. I had access to dragon strength, and she was stuck in that weak human body of hers.

I started to tell her that she didn’t intimidate me when a shock of power jolted through me.

Dammit! She was pulling my magic to the surface. Like what had happened back in the dungeon, black scales started forming on my arms and moving to cover my chest. And we were in the manor house’s hallway. There wasn’t room for a dragon in here. Not even close. I’d destroy the manor if she succeeded in creating another burst of power like before.

“Stop!” I gritted out. The power surge made all my muscles tense. I could barely remain standing. “You’re going to hurt everyone around us!”

Her hand had started to glow yellow like the sun. And her eyes glowed white like the moon.

“Celestina!” I shouted loud enough that the elders and the council gathered in the dining room came pouring out into the hallway.

“What’s going on?” my father, the clan leader, demanded.

My teeth and mouth had expanded. My fingers had transformed into talons. Though I hadn’t meant to, those talons dug into the skin where I was gripping her arm. I tried to pull away, but her hand on top of mine held firm like a vice grip.

“Can’t. Stop. Her,” I barely managed to get out. “Turning.”

“There’s no room here for that,” Victor, the young dragon, unhelpfully pointed out.

Trace wedged himself as close between us as possible and put his hands on Celestina’s cheeks. He turned her head, so she was looking at him and not at me. “Celestina,” he said in that soft-spoken manner of his. “I need you to let go of Amaya.”

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink her unnaturally bright eyes.

“I don’t think she can hear me,” Trace said. Like me, he was trying to lift her hand from where it was still resting on mine.

Her body vibrated from the amount of power coursing through us.

“We need to break them apart,” my father said coming to the other side of me.

“I don’t think I can.” Trace strained as he used both hands and his arms enhanced with dragon power, as he tried to move Celestina. My father joined in. But we remained locked together as the magic in my body built and built. Celestina had turned into an immovable boulder.

It took all that was in me to keep from turning into my dragon form.

“Get everyone out of here,” I panted the warning. The manor house would be destroyed when my magic exploded. And I didn’t want anyone injured.

“Go! Clear the rooms!” my father ordered. He kept his hands on Celestina’s arm and kept pulling. “I’ll not leave you, Daughter.”

“No…” If he stayed, he’d die. His human form wouldn’t survive the explosion of magic. “Go…”

“I won’t,” my stubborn father said.

“I won’t leave, either,” Trace said.

“Nor I,” Anther added. He placed his hand on my shoulder.

“I. Won’t. Die… You. Will… Get. The. Hell. Out.” I growled and snapped my sharp teeth at them.

Naturally, none of them obeyed me. That was male dragons for you—too arrogant for their own good.

It was up to me to save them. Just as I felt my human body slipping away, I raised my partially turned hand, the one Celestina wasn’t clutching, and swiped my sword-sharp talons at her already injured neck. The talons cut through the bandages there as if they were paper and sliced deeper, through skin and neck muscles.

Blood spurted out of the vein I nicked, spraying me and Trace in the face.

“What have you done?” Trace shouted.

Celestina cried out, her hands instinctively reaching for her neck.

Suddenly free, I stumbled backward. I would have fallen on my ass if not for Anther. He wrapped his hands around my middle and spun me away from Celestina.

“Get control,” he commanded. “Get control of it now.”

I gave a shaky nod and screwed my eyes shut as I tried to pull all that magic back inside me. Goddess, there was too much. My body couldn’t contain it all.

“She’s glowing,” Anther cried. “The magic, it’s still building.”

“Get her on the ground outside!” my father shouted. “Move! Now!”

Anther swung me over his shoulder and ran with dragon speed through the center of the manor house. He burst out the front doors with a splintering crash and tossed me like a javelin. I landed hard on the packed earth that served as a walkway in front of the manor. My forehead hit the ground first. My neck snapped painfully back before I jolted violently against the ground.

Goddess, the magic pulsed and screamed and tore at my body. It was too much. I wouldn’t survive it. My talons clawed the dirt as I tried to keep from exploding into a million fleshy pieces.

At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was in my human or dragon form. Everything hurt.

I opened my mouth and screamed.

Magic poured from my body into the ground, draining me until there was nothing left.

Nothing.

I was air. I was sky. I was darkness. I was night.

And I’d tumbled back into that stupid vampire prince’s head.

“Celestina,” Cullen’s brother was barely able to scrape her name from his mouth. The big warrior tumbled off his horse and crumpled to the ground. His body jerking as if entering death throes.

I was everywhere.

And nowhere.

I was night.

Cullen leaped off his own steed and was at his brother’s side in a moment. The three others with him dismounted. The two males pulled their swords as they searched the darkness for the threat that had taken their general. The female knelt next to Cullen. Moving with great care, Cullen gently lifted his brother’s head and cradled it in his lap.

“What’s happening?” he asked me, because he knew—like he always knew—when I’d slid into his thoughts. “ Talk to me, Amaya. What’s wrong with Celestina?”

The once calm waters of his mind had turned as choppy as a storm-tossed ocean. I didn’t like it in there. I wanted his calm waters. I needed his calm.

“If she dies, my brother dies!” he shouted in my mind. “You promised she was safe with your kind!”

“She did this to herself. She nearly killed me and half the clan in the process.” I looked down at the nothingness that had once been my body. “ Dammit, I think she killed me.”

“You’re not dead.”

“Who are you to tell me if I’m dead or not? Jerk. I exploded. I’m a billion little particles now. All of them dead.”

“I don’t connect with ghosts.”

“Oh, so this is a common thing for you? You have hordes of other females sliding into your thoughts?” I should have known.

“You’re the first…and only.”

“Then how do you know you don’t connect with ghosts?”

“I just know. Besides, if you were dead, you wouldn’t be able to exact your revenge against me.”

“I could haunt you.”

“But, Amaya, you promised to eat me alive. You promised twice that you’d do it.”

“Aren’t you lucky that I’m dead, then? You won’t have to suffer the slow, painful death I had planned for you.”

“But I’ve been looking forward to it. Should I tell you what I do at night when my thoughts are consumed with thoughts of you putting your pretty mouth on my body? Should I tell you how I stroke myself until I’m moaning your name?”

I growled.

“That’s how I feel at night. Frustrated as hell.”

“Sounds like that’s about to become a chronic condition for you. I don’t have a body—dragon or human. Celestina blasted them both apart. And now I’m dead.”

“I’ve read that when dragons turn from one form to another, there’s a moment when you are neither shape. For a stunning, magical moment, you become nothing…and everything.”

“Duh. I know how turning works.”

“So, it’s true? Good. Then you should also know that you’re not dead, but only stuck in that in-between phase of turning.”

Was I stuck? I’d never spent more than a fraction of a heartbeat in the nothingness that preceded a shift of forms. I never paid attention to how it felt to be nothing and everything, as Cullen had described it. Goddess, if I was stuck, Anther would never let me live this one down. And, if Cullen was right, well, I didn’t want to imagine the smug expression that would overtake the prince’s already tempting mouth.

Grrr…

“Soren has stopped breathing,” the female warned. “What’s going on, Cullen? Why did he fall off his horse? There’s no injury. Why the hell are we about to lose him?”

“Something happened with the dragons. Celestina is badly hurt,” Cullen answered.

His worry made the violently churning waters in his mind turn acidic. His thoughts burned.

“You need to save Celestina. Please, Amaya. Go back to her. Save her.”