Alamosa Arena (American Dragons Book 9) Read online

  To be there alone with the Dragonlord felt wrong. He felt wrong. Heridan focused on the Morta, blackening her soul. Teleporting him to the Aerie had drained her of the dark energy, that, and the Connexra. She’d hooked into Mother’s vast network of threads permeating the world. And Zothora had noticed. Mother’s attention both unnerved Heridan and filled her with longing. Heridan closed her black eyes and shook her horned head. “No!”

  “What is it, Tara?” the Dragonlord asked, worried. There seemed to be real emotion in his voice.

  That made it worse. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” the elder Drokharis asked.

  Heridan wasn’t sure. Seeing him, feeling his empty core, had been the last straw. The conflict splitting her in two had given way, and for an instant, she’d fallen completely under Mother’s sway. In that moment, she saw how important the bearded man was to Steven and his wives. She’d stolen him away before he could help them finalize their plans.

  Now? All of her doubts returned. Why did she bring him to the Aerie?

  That she knew. “We had our last party here. It was after we killed Mordred and the other Dragonknights, in that battle in Kansas. We all felt so invincible. At that party, you told us we were going to lure the Zothoric in and destroy them. Here. Right in this room.”

  Heridan and her friends had stayed in the hotel, in their best suites, and they’d gotten drunk, laughing, so arrogant. Nothing could stop them—surely not some supposedly all-powerful goddess and her army of demon bugs.

  Even better, the Drokharis Dragonlord said they would reveal themselves to the humans. Heridan had grown up casting spells; her parents had been faithful vassals to Stefan before he started his road to conquest. Heridan’s father was a Magician, and her mother was a Dragonskin. She had such vivid memories of flying on her mother’s back through the skies. Heridan’s first spells were to hide her mother from human eyes and to wipe their memories of the supernatural entities that coexisted beside them.

  To stop hiding from the humans? The entire world would change overnight. Stefan had made alliances with nearly every Dragonlord on the planet. They had plans to end hunger, sickness, and to bring magic back to the humans. That happy vision of the future had been consumed by the Great Devouring.

  Stefan tried to stand, then staggered back and sank into a leather easy chair. He winced, gasping. “Yes, I remember the party. It was my last victory. After that, whatever luck I had left me.” He inhaled deeply. “My time is over. But this new Steven, he will complete the work. He’s learned from not just my mistakes, but other versions of himself. He has the best chance to win. You have to help him, Tara. You have a key role to play in this.”

  “I’m not Tara,” she insisted. “I’m Heridan. I’m a Prosha of the Myriad. I am darkness. I am death.” The words rang out hollowly. She definitely wasn’t a Prosha, and as for the other bullshit, those words came from Zothora’s whispers.

  She clutched at her head, feeling the horns there. Eyes closed, she tried to figure out what she should do next.

  “Yes, Heridan, you’re not Tara anymore. You know, I had a lot of vassals, some of them I remember, some of them I don’t. I had a lot of people to deal with. But I remember you. You were kind, courageous, and don’t think I’ve forgotten how helpful your parents were at the beginning of my conquests.”

  She opened her eyes. The bearded man reached and removed the walkie-talkie from the charging station. He held it in his hands.

  “What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

  “That depends,” he said. “Which side of the war are you on? You’re going to have to choose.”

  She thought she had chosen by stealing the Drokharis Dragonlord away. That hadn’t been the case. “I don’t know. I want to side with you and Steven. I want to do the right thing. But Mother’s pull is strong. My Morta is as much about hate as it is about fear. All I feel is hate and fear. If only I had love.”

  “Steven could give you that,” the bearded man said. “He’s stronger than I was, and his Escort is something out of a Dragonknight’s fairy tale. I’ve never seen such talent. The thirteenth Dragonknight. The daughter of Merlin with six-guns. A mouse with the Slayer Blade. The Texas machine-gun twins. The Mexican seeress. A disgraced ninja. A Morphling with a heart of gold. A dark elf assassin. You could join them.”

  Her eyes went to the radio. She guessed what the green light meant. “This hotel, there are humans here, and they have generators. You’ve been organizing the last resistance forces, haven’t you?”

  The crippled Dragonlord returned her gaze. He clicked the talk button. “This is Fauntleroy. Come in, Frances, or Hodgson, or Burnett. Copy back if you read me.”

  The radio squawked with static. “Read you loud and clear, Fauntleroy.”

  Heridan lost her chitin and horns. Her hands turned human. “Little Lord Fauntleroy?” she asked. And those names he’d said? Frances Hodgson Burnett was a children’s book author a hundred years ago.

  “I’m not a great lord anymore,” Stefan said. He clicked the radio. “I’m in the top room of our secret garden. Have we heard from the little princess?”

  More static. Then a voice answered, “We haven’t, Fauntleroy. But we have Shaze activity, heading toward you. Not sure how you got up there without us noticing, but we have birds en route.”

  Stefan went to say something else.

  The wall of windows crashed inward. Shaze swept in. The demon bugs were five-foot-long insects, like midnight-black ladybugs, with six limbs and nightmare mouths, which whistled madness. Their soft bellies glowed with Animus grubs. Oily black eyes were like gashes on their long heads.

  One leapt on Stefan. The fanged mouth opened to rip out his throat.

  Heridan didn’t think. She threw a BlackBlood spear and impaled the demon before it could hurt the Dragonlord. Other bugs whistled at her, sucking in air through their nose holes. They were sniffing at her.

  She felt their thoughts, rudimentary, but vibrating through her consciousness. Enemy. Enemy. Enemy. That same word, over and over. They attacked.

  Heridan lashed out with tentacles to pierce the demons. Yes, she was their enemy, at least for the moment.

  The hit of Morta felt good. She channeled it into the dining room table, which leapt to life. Her Corropor creation scrambled forward and smashed a Shaze against a bookcase. Books tumbled off, smacking the demon on its head even as it squealed, crushed by the table.

  The table upended itself, giving Heridan protection for a second. She latched onto Stefan with her tendrils and yanked him close. Using Leeze, she drained all the Morta from a Shaze creeping toward her. It shriveled into a husk. Animus grubs were squeezed out of its belly to litter the floor.

  Other Shaze scrambled forward to eat the grubs. If a Prosha were near, those demons wouldn’t have been so mindless, thinking with their bellies instead of their heads.

  Full of Morta, Heridan vanished with Stefan. She appeared in the bedroom. She flung out BlackBlood to smash through the windows, then used more of the ichor to make them crawl out of the hotel and onto the roof.

  Zothoric demons blackened the building. The stink of them assaulted her senses. Several Zalarfangs, huge creatures of teeth, millipede legs, and tentacles, climbed up the side, smashing through windows. Inside the troop carriers were dozens of Shaze, ready to fight.

  Unlike the demons inside the Zalarfangs, the Toufulkor rode on the back of the troop carriers. The monstrous Toufulkor were ten feet tall, standing on what looked like goat legs. They didn’t have hands but notched lengths of bone about two feet long, spiked at the ends. They could create spears to fit into their atlatl-like appendages. Long goat faces with rolling ram horns bleated at Heridan as she stood on the top of the hotel.

  The Toufulkor reached back with their long arms. Morta ichor coalesced around the long bones of their hands, creating a variety of spears. Once the shafts were formed, the goat demon javelineers hurled a rain of Morta spears from the backs of the Zalarfangs.

  Heridan knocked away the first barrage with a wave of her hand, directing the BlackBlood bubbling in the air around her.

  A new sound struck Heridan. The air thrummed with the engines and slashes of helicopters cutting through the air. Missiles struck the carriers climbing the hotel, one after another. The Shaze inside the Zalarfang let out plaintive cries as the carrier’s teeth shattered inward, peppering the demons with broken fangs. Toufulkor were blasted into pieces.

  “Thank the heavens for Hodgson,” Stefan wheezed from where Heridan held him.

  Shaze swept down, blocking out the light of the sun. Then, gunfire, from the machine guns on the helicopters, cut through the demons, flinging blood, brains, and bone.

  From below, more explosions as light infantry picked off the Shaze on the hotel. There were rifles, RPGs, and rocket launchers—the humans down there had come fully loaded.

  The helicopters swept around the hotel, pursued by thousands of Shaze. The people on the ground switched from the demons on the building to the demons in the air.

  This wasn’t Heridan’s problem. She teleported from the top of the hotel to the doorway of a downtown restaurant. She’d received Morta from her kills, but she was so exhausted and still so uncertain.

  Enemy. From out of thin air, a Hybrith appeared, wrapping its tentacles around her throat. Her mind was penetrated by the thing, as was her core. Both her thoughts and her Morta were sucked into the Hybrith. She heard a gunshot before she lost consciousness.

  She dreamt about her friends drinking coffee at the Roostercat in Denver. She always went back there because what she’d had was special. She knew that. A deep part of her, her truest part, wanted to be human again, to be among friends. She didn’t need the love of a
goddess, just simple camaraderie. It wasn’t a lot to ask.

  She gazed at their faces, only it wasn’t Christine, Vickie, or the rest. No, she was sitting under the red umbrellas in the alleyway with Steven Drokharis’s Escort. Tessa was complaining about the coffee, Mouse was teasing Aria, who sat prim and straight, taking it like a champ. The Wayne twins were talking about fingernail polish.

  Heridan woke to find the wind in her hair. Stefan was behind the wheel of a white convertible corvette, racing down a highway. The black ribbon of I-25 lay in front of them. The dead land whisked by them. The sky bled overhead, the clouds like wounds in all the crimson.

  The walkie-talkie rested between the Dragonlord’s legs. “You’re awake. That’s good. I was getting worried there. I shot the Hybrith. Didn’t feel a thing.” He smiled wistfully. “As a human, I can’t lose Animus. I can’t get Morta.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I’d like to see if the little princess is still alive.” The elder Drokharis let out a heartbroken breath. “I’m not sure if Hodgson made it or not, but a couple of those helicopters went down. Maybe I should’ve stayed in Colorado Springs, but I wouldn’t have been able to do much. It would be a shame to lose Frances, or Hodgson, or Burnett.”

  “Those aren’t their real names,” Heridan said over the wind.

  “Code names.” He winked at her. “We probably don’t need to be so secretive, but we’re trying to be careful. There are all kinds of enemies around.”

  They lapsed into silence until they hit the small town of Walsenburg.

  Stefan turned off at a gas station, frowning at the sky. It was later afternoon, the autumn day almost over. The peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rose up in ramparts of rocks and dead trees. On the other side of the mountain range, dark storm clouds swirled and crackled with lightning. And in the maelstrom were Shaze. Even at a distance, they could see the air dark with them. There weren’t just thousands of them, there were millions.

  The Drokharis Dragonlord shook his head. “They know. Somehow, those fuckers know about the master chamber in Alamosa.” He turned to her. “We need information. I know this is a lot to ask, but can you link into the Zothoric, somehow, and see what is going on over there?”

  Heridan wished she’d stayed unconscious. At least she had peace there. Now, she found herself back in the conflict. There was a real chance if she connected to Zothora, the queen of the Myriad, it would drive her insane.

  She had another option, but it was equally dangerous. Ulita Rozhenko would know about the endless swarm covering the flooded San Luis Valley. The problem was, Ulita hated her.

  Heridan recalled what she’d felt from the Zothoric in Colorado Springs. Enemy. Enemy. Enemy. Perhaps nothing could change that.

  “I’ll try,” Heridan whispered.

  The elder Drokharis thought for a moment. “Not here. The little princess might be able to help you. Let’s get down to Red River and see what we can see.”

  At first, Heridan was relieved she didn’t have to reach out to Mother. Then fear crept in. She was in agony as they got back onto I-25, going south as fast as the corvette could go.

  Chapter Nine

  STEVEN SAILED INTO Colorado Springs with his Escort behind him. He’d considered using StellarFlight but decided it would be overkill.

  Zoey clung to his back, protected by a shield spell. Tessa rode Aria. A pink force field covered the gunslinging barista, protecting her from the chill winds. As for Quinnestri, she’d promised she’d arrive there, in time.

  She wouldn’t say more. Since their relationship wasn’t the best, Steven hadn’t pressed the issue. The Lyra queen promised she wouldn’t be using Portal magic to get there, but a powerful version of Astreelia. She was going to spend some time searching for Vandrus Dree.

  Steven saw the battle being fought around the Antlers Hotel, but then his eyes were drawn to the southwest. Beyond the mountain ranges, the storm clouds swirled in strange patterns, cluttering up the sky. That wasn’t natural. Worse yet, that was exactly where they needed to go. Well, first things first. The humans battling the Zothoric needed their help.

  Steven swooped low and breathed ShadowFlame into a dozen Shaze and Splackers on the main street in front of the hotel. He landed, and Zoey slipped off his back, shifting into a bear. She covered herself in golden armor thanks to the amulet around her neck. Shaze buzzed in for the attack, and she shredded them with her claws. Several tried to bite through her armor. She crushed them underfoot.

  “Faith!” Steven armored up as well. In his True Form, he towered over the bear, encased in the Baxter armor. He added BlackBlood spears to his arsenal. Several Shaze found themselves impaled in quick succession. The kills drew Animus from him but also filled him with Morta. An idea came to him. Could he use Morta to power one of his Exhalants? Toxicity was the likeliest candidate. Rahaab was able to spit acid. It was food for thought.

  A Splacker charged forward. Steven cast a shield spell, scooped up the bug-faced dog, and sent it careening into a Zalarfang trundling forward. The Splacker exploded, covering the troop carrier with acid. The Zalarfang was already empty of Shaze, but one less truck-sized demon wasn’t a bad thing.

  Steven drove more Splackers back with his shield. He breathed Inferno to cook more Shaze. The first rain of javelins skittered off his armor. By that time, Aria and Tessa had joined them.

  The red-scaled dragon spit ArcticWind into the new type of Zothoric, huge goat-headed demons with spear-throwers for hands. It froze them solid. Steven would have to ask Tessa the name of them. She’d been studying up on the various types of demons for months now. She’d memorized whole sections of The Zothoritrix.

  Tessa fired a long revolver in one hand, sending ElectroArc bullets into the horde of demons attacking them. She’d already cast AnimusChain and was hooked into their cores. She held Icharaam’s Orb in her left hand and channeled power into them, keeping them filled with energy.

  Steven used every weapon in his arsenal, flinging Impetim missiles, breathing fire, cold, and lightning. He imbued the corpses of the huge goat demons with Incanto magic, and they stumbled against their friends, stabbing them with the spiked bones at the end of their arms.

  The humans helped as well. Three helicopters strafed the demons with mounted .50 caliber machine guns while ground troops fired into the demons with a collection of weapons.

  A cloud covered the sun and a Hybrith teleported in, trying to get his Morta coils around Tessa. She laughed at him. “Oh, a Shadower, we haven’t fought you guys in a hot minute.” She ripped off his head with the telekinetic aspect of her Defensio magic. To think, when Mathaal had used his telekinetic abilities, they’d been so impressed. Now, it was commonplace. How things had changed since fighting Rhaegen Mulk in Wyoming.

  The air shimmered near Steven, and he turned, ready to destroy whatever was appearing there with electricity. A second later, Quinnestri appeared. She flung off her fur-lined robes, revealing tight white clothing underneath. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a single braid that fell down her back.

  She stood there, fists at her sides, gathering power. Then she struck. Purple hatchets appeared in her hands, and she waded into battle. She moved with such grace, such elegance, and so fast. She easily ducked the demons attacking her and hacked her Animus axes into their skulls. Flesh sizzled and parted as the purple light penetrated their carapaces. She could also fling her hatchets like Impetim missiles. A second later, they would appear back in her hands.

  A javelin struck her but glanced off in a flash of lavender brilliance. She had a shield spell protecting her skin. Was this a part of the Bellicosia abilities she’d talked about? Her speed and strength were definitely supernatural.

  Tessa laughed. “Go, Quinnie! Whatever else you are, you do have an Animus core, and I can keep you going. You can thank me later.”

  The Lyra queen didn’t respond but fought on.

  When the last Shaze was crushed under Zoey’s paw, they took a breath.