Alamosa Arena (American Dragons Book 9) Read online

  “No, not with my son. He was a lost cause.” SD paused. “During my research with the Americos Chambers, I created my own master chamber that would work better than the others. This... this was after the Battle of Denver. I thought I’d lost everything. In some sense, I did, but that was nothing compared to what happened in Alamosa.”

  “That’s in Colorado, right?” Tessa asked. “And it’s fun to say. Al-a-mo-sa. Like it’s a lost city full of gold. The treasures of Alamosa, like an old time-y movie.”

  SD patiently grinned. “I believe you mean The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Badges and all that.”

  “Old school,” Tessa agreed.

  Quinn snapped her fingers. “This is not the time for stories. Please, do not prattle on.”

  “I will keep the prattling to a minimum,” SD conceded.

  Tessa frowned at the mocha in front of the Lyra queen. “Quinn, if you don’t like chocolate, I can try something with vanilla.”

  “I do not know what chocolate is.” Quinn motioned for the elder Drokharis to continue.

  Steven wanted to know as well. What was in Alamosa?

  SD cleared his throat. “The San Luis Valley flooded, and we started calling it the Rio Grande Sea. The Great Sand Dunes are on the eastern shore. I created an island there, near what used to be Alamosa, along the old highway to Hooper. There, in the master chamber, I thought to try the repulsing magic again. Yes, the first time failed. Perhaps the second time I would have better luck. Little did I know that I’d burn out my Animus core. Such is the nature of RealityFire.”

  A shiver went through Steven. He pulled up the Path of the Twin-Souled Dragon.

  STEVEN STUDIED THE tree and realized he had mastered every skill except for ChromaticFury and RealityFire, at the top of the Alpherian head of the dragon. Icharaam’s Crown had supercharged his Exhalant abilities.

  “What is RealityFire?” Steven asked.

  SD leaned forward, rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. Can we meet later? I need to rest. I have so little energy now that I burned out my energy core.”

  “Unacceptable,” Quinn said, a firm expression covering her face. “Time is of the essence. According to Steven, the Utereich is coming and could be here any day. This world has a single Prosha, this Ulita Rozhenko, but if the Zothoric are able to create another one, we would have real trouble.”

  “Only one Prosha?” SD asked. “We know one died but our intel said they’d brewed up one more in Leadville.”

  “We freed Tara Heridan,” Aria explained. “It was our first mission here.”

  SD’s face turned pale. Sweat slid down from his scalp. “Tara Heridan. My Tara?” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought she was killed in the Battle of Denver. I... I didn’t know she’d been captured. Please, I’m pushing myself as it is.”

  Tessa rose and helped SD to his feet. “Sorry, Quinn, but this has to wait. Look at him. He’s beyond exhausted.”

  Quinn shot to her feet. “So you engage in endless jests. You coddle your people. All the while, death is breathing down upon us. Unacceptable!”

  Aria exhaled flame. “I agree with Quinnestri. Mr. Drokharis, tell us more about the master chamber in Alamosa.”

  “Don’t answer that,” Tessa said.

  Steven got involved. “Mr. Drokharis, I know this is hard, but what was your plan with the Alamosa chamber?”

  Tessa widened her eyes. “Steven, you have to side with me. We’ve got enough information for now.”

  SD leaned heavily on the barista. “There was no power for the chamber. I created it. I linked it up with the others. A network... Animus... to stop her... to bring back.” He sank down to his knees. Tessa wasn’t strong enough to keep him on his feet.

  Aria came forward to catch him before he went face-first into the hard tiles of the main terminal’s floor.

  The Indian dragon scooped him up in her arms. “I’ll take care of him.” She leapt into the air and flew SD up to their office rooms.

  Quinn marched over to Tessa. “You, girl, are a child. You have not lived, nor have you battled, like I have. You need to know your place, which I would suspect is in the kitchen.”

  Tessa’s mouth dropped open. When she closed it, her lips shrunk into a pissed-off pucker. “Wait. You’re new, Quinnie. You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me. So you need to shut your trap. Don’t make me go full-on fuck-customer-service barista on you.”

  “What is that?” Quinn wrinkled her nose. “What are these strange words you bandy about? Barista? Chocolate? You speak in riddles.”

  Tessa raised a finger. “First, a barista is an angel who makes coffee, unless you fuck with them, and then they become the devil of your worst nightmare. Second, if you drank your fucking mocha, which I made you, you’d know what fucking chocolate is. Lastly, I’m the daughter of Merlin, I’m the daughter of the Slayer, and I have a supply of Animus you wouldn’t believe. We work as a team, and we talk about things, and you might be the queen in Aqualyra, but you’re the new girl here, and you better know your place.” Tears slid out of Tessa’s eyes. She brushed them away. “Great, now you have me angry crying. I can’t believe this shit.”

  Steven had never heard of angry crying before in his life.

  Quinn stepped back and gave Tessa a cold look. “How old are you?”

  Nefri gazed at the pair from her seat. The dark elf sipped her coffee with an interested gleam in her eye. This was high drama.

  Steven stood, waiting to step in. It was a shame that Tessa and Quinnestri were getting off on the wrong foot, but he trusted Tessa would be able to handle herself. If not, he’d get involved.

  Tessa inhaled and blinked. She exhaled. “I get it, Quinnestri. You’re millions of years old, and you’ve done this before. And I know you’re afraid. I’ve been afraid for weeks now, terrified. And I’ve been busy. SD said this new master chamber reconnected the other chambers, but he ran out of power to charge them. We have the power. I’ve been able to replicate Icharaam’s Orbs using Enchantrix. It took some time, but I got the matrix down. Which means we have the power to bring Animus to the chambers.”

  Quinn’s expression turned thoughtful.

  Nefri sipped coffee from her mug, loudly.

  When the Lyra queen glanced over, the dark elf waved.

  That didn’t help Quinn’s mood. Nefri could be such a troublemaker. Steven gave her a stern look. “Behave.”

  “It seems you are all against me,” Quinn said, chin lifted high. “Why wake me if you ignore my counsel?”

  Tessa went to her. She reached out a hand. “We aren’t ignoring it. We want your input. But you have to treat us with respect, all of us.”

  Quinn remained distant and cold. “I am royalty on Aqualyra. And I will be royalty here. You all will grow accustomed to it. I will not change.” She went and plucked her mug up from the table by the chairs. She sipped it before breaking away from them to the escalators.

  She whirled. “This is delicious. Is this the chocolate?”

  Tessa nodded. “Chocolate. Coffee. And a lot of high fructose corn syrup. Welcome to America.”

  Quinn turned and climbed the stairs. She hugged the mug to her chest.

  Steven walked up next to Tessa. “Well, uh, that wasn’t good. I have a couple of questions.”

  “Shoot.” Tessa stood, brow furrowed.

  “What’s angry crying?” Steven asked.

  Nefri let out a laugh.

  “Men.” Tessa sighed. “There’s all sorts of crying. Happy crying, sad crying, angry crying. It’s when you get so pissed off, so upset, you can’t help but cry. Next question.”

  “What was this about you being a full-on fuck-customer-service barista?” Steven was genuinely curious, though that wasn’t his real question.

  “I’m chill, right?” Tessa nodded. “Don’t answer that. I know I’m chill. At the Coffee Clutch, I got along with most people, but every now and then, some customer stepped out of line, and I had to say fuck c
ustomer service and set them right. Most of the time, they figured out what they needed to do to get their coffee, and they’d do it. Quinnie will need to learn that. And we don’t even know what her powers are. Sure, she set up some cool magic on Earth, and she had the whole sleep-for-centuries thing as well as astral projection, but dude, would that help us in combat? Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Nefri was more concise. She flipped a middle finger at the escalators that Quinnestri had climbed. The meaning was clear: fuck that bitch.

  Steven sighed. Gathering an Escort was one thing. Getting them to get along was a whole other deal. He’d gotten lucky since most of his wives were happy to be with him and got along with each other great, even Mouse and the Texas machine-gun twins.

  Tessa surprised him by casting a Magica Divinatio spell. Her eyes gleamed with a pink light. “What you really want to know is if we can broadcast a crap-ton of Animus out of the Americos Chambers. Sorry, but I got impatient. And, yeah, Nefri needs to be nicer to Quinn. If her queenliness is hogging up all the attitude, the rest of us need to be on our best behavior.”

  “She’s right, Nefri,” Steven said.

  The dark elf rolled her eyes. It wasn’t surprising that the Ohkreela was having a hard time dealing with the Lyra; they were polar opposites of one another.

  “Quinnestri didn’t join my Escort,” Steven said. “We forced her here. So that’s not going to help things. As for the chambers, yeah, what if we could amplify the effects of the chamber, to maybe not repulse the Zothoric but to destroy them?”

  He thought of the Leeze ability.

  “Not just that.” Tessa touched his arm. “We could bring life back to the continent. Remember how when we have sex outside, the plants grow because of our Animus exchange? I’m seeing that amplified across thousands of square miles. New life.”

  “Maybe we could destroy and create at the same time.” Steven stood there, wondering about their next steps. They had the beginnings of a plan. He needed more information, and he needed to get his troops in line. SD’s health was precarious. Quinn wasn’t playing along. And then there was Tara Heridan, who’d been problematic since they first met her.

  “You and Aria did what?” Tessa asked Nefri. The two were talking telepathically. The barista shoved Steven. “You should’ve called me, Steven. That all sounded super-hot.”

  Nefri didn’t pause. She went right up to Tessa, stuck her blue face into Tessa’s, then waited.

  Tessa blinked and breathed hard. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Nefri kept her eyes open as she settled in close. She cupped one of Tessa’s tits, their faces less than an inch apart. Tessa opened her mouth, then closed it, but kept eye contact.

  The dark elf slowly licked Tessa’s bottom lip. Then Nefri took the lip between hers, sucking gently, before pulling back.

  Nefri strutted away, ass weaving.

  “What a fucking tease.” Tessa’s legs were trembling so badly she was forced to sit down. Her charged but short encounter with the dark elf appeared to have left her a bit bewildered. “Well, at least someone from Aqualyra seems to like me.”

  Steven grinned. Dealing with wife drama did have its benefits at the end of the day.

  Chazzie and Pru came floating off the upper level as two pink Homo Draconi. They landed next to them and turned into two gorgeous freckled women with strawberry blonde hair and eyes the color of cedar.

  Chazzie gave him a sigh. “Uh, Steven, your pet bug is losing her shit upstairs. Pru and I don’t have Raid, but we do have a few .50 caliber bullets that’d do the trick.”

  Zoey, in her bear form, leaned over the railing and roared. Sabina had a hand on the bear’s back. “Yes, Steven, you’ll find Heridan in Terminal A. You might want to go alone.”

  Lastly, Mouse came out of the offices, squinting, in one of his T-shirts, dragging the Slayer Blade behind her. “For the love of biscuits, could we not have these early morning freak-outs? People can turn evil after I’ve had my morning coffee.”

  Steven was in his partial form in an instant, flying toward the offices. He heard the shrieks, the sound of broken glass, and then a heartbroken wail. He hoped he wasn’t too late to stop Tara Heridan’s complete self-destruction.

  Chapter Four

  TARA HERIDAN KNEW SHE was dreaming. She sat at a black-mesh table under a red umbrella in the alley of the Roostercat Coffee House in Denver. Her friends were with her: Christine, Vickie, Terry T., Florida Rob, and Bryant. They were all vassals of the Stefan Drokharis Primacy, which was on the verge of freeing them forever from the Zothoric.

  Tara could hardly believe a day would come when humans, Dragonsouls, and Dragonkind could live side by side. Stefan painted glorious visions of traveling to other worlds and exploring the universe; already, Tara was learning Magica Porta in preparation. Stefan had access to magic, grimoires, and knowledge that would make such world-hopping possible. The only thing standing in their way was the Zothoric.

  Bryant, always so handsome, said something funny to Florida Rob. Rob laughed, also good-natured. That ended when Steven Drokharis walked up to the table with two women hanging off him.

  The young Drokharis had inky black hair and gray eyes. A permanent smirk twisted his lips. “You need to stop spreading rumors about me, Tara. We don’t need your lies, not when we’re about to fight the Zothoric.”

  “Maybe they’re not lies.” Christine wasn’t about to take any shit sitting. She was a big Morphling woman who ran wild as a monstrous gray wolf. Christine’s fury was getting the better of her. She stood, her hair growing into a shaggy mane before their eyes.

  “It’s okay, Christine.” Tara remained seated. She looked up at Stefan’s son and tried to stay relaxed. “I don’t know what lies you think I’ve been spreading.” When in doubt, play stupid, especially when it came to the son of the most powerful Dragonlord on Earth.

  Steven reached, fueled by SerpentGrace, and flicked the tip of Tara’s nose with his fingers. It stung and made her eyes water.

  Then the bastard was back standing with the two women. They weren’t part of his Escort. Steven didn’t have a Primacy, so he didn’t have an Escort. Supposedly, he’d get a harem after the war with the Zothoric. Tara had her doubts.

  She held her face, nose throbbing.

  “Don’t talk shit, Tara, or there will be consequences.” Steven walked off with the two women trailing. Tara and her friends had no idea who they were. That was okay—he’d have two new ones the next week.

  Summer. It was the June before the war started, more than two years in the past.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. One of Tara’s memories.

  She wasn’t Tara, she was Heridan, and the difference was destroying her.

  Heridan shrieked and came awake. In a room, in an office, ceiling tiles, cubicle walls, a mattress on the floor, and soft lights from expensive lamps. Another Steven Drokharis had ripped her away from her home in the Cruxis. Was he as smirking and smarmy as the asshole in her dream? Or was it a memory?

  Heridan grew furious with herself. It was hard to think. Hate was easier than doubt. She’d keep on hating any Steven Drokharis she met even though she felt the pull of the Dragonlord magic on her. She wanted to love him. She wanted to give herself to him, to join his Escort, to become his wife. That fucking magic made hate a requirement.

  She felt the Morta inside her bubbling, feeding off her fury. BlackBlood tentacles burst forth from her hands, which were black claws now, covered in chitin. A black exoskeleton covered her from her hands to her elbows, from her feet to her knees, and all around her head and neck. She heard her skull creak and crack as horns grew out of the bone, circling her head. Inside her mouth, she had fangs, and it seemed even her spit had changed into Morta ichor.

  She smelled the rank perfume of those twin girls. She knew about Steven’s Escort and the dirty things they did to each other. They had a new girl with them, some bitch with blue skin. There was evil inside her. That same evil was in Heridan, and it felt good
to embrace her hate.

  Heridan smashed through the door, walking across the floor on liquid Morta. She smashed into the corner office and through the bad roadhouse décor of the Wayne sisters’ room: a Bud Light sign, a wagon-wheel coffee table, pink canopies over their beds, and then the rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and bazookas lying in piles of ammunition.

  Heridan smashed through the window and walked on Morta stilts of her Morta core between cars parked in the upper deck’s Arrival lanes. The morning sun cast shadows on the western side of the airport.

  Those shadows called to her. She’d been so excited about Magica Porta back when she’d been a Magician, a vassal working for the Drokharis Primacy, but not one of Stefan’s wives. He’d said he needed warriors and not wives.

  Heridan instinctively knew what to do. Transvexri, that would take her to the darkness, and she could emerge from other shadows—all she needed was to reach out with Connexra to find their location. Because Mother knew. Mother knew about everyone, everywhere.

  Mother. Zothora. She was searching for her exiled Prosha, as was Ulita Rozhenko, in Russia. Was Ulita still there? Or was she moving?

  Heridan appeared in the shadows on the south end of the terminal. She walked herself back into the sunlight on her own legs. She felt the warmth on her skin but not on her back. Something was different about her body. Again, she went on instinct. The carapace covering her back opened, and whirring wings took her into the air.

  She could fly. Mother’s gifts were endless.

  On buzzing wings, she sailed from the main terminal, past the bridge, to the A Gates. Another skill, Corropor, filled her head. She reached out with a hand. She could control other people’s minds and bodies using Corropor. She could also animate objects. She focused on the jet bridge. It came alive, a serpent of living metal.

  Heridan stepped into the mouth of the snake.

  Mother was looking for her, but Heridan kept herself hidden. She couldn’t make the choice, yet. She’d been asleep for a week, or was it two weeks? Or was it two years?