“Gerik,” I sighed in relief. I’d never before
been so happy before to see anyone.
Gerik stood strong and tall, light magic
pouring from his hands, blasting the hell out of anyone who came
within several feet of him. And come at him they did. In two's and
three’s. From all sides. Hissing and growling. Leaping and lunging.
But Gerik was tuned in to all of his surroundings and not one of
them got close enough to touch him as he easily blasted them
backwards with enough force that audible cracks sounded as their
bones broke.
Then Walther stepped forward, holding
handfuls of black mist. “Magic,” I breathed, “The Skin Eater has
magic.”
Real fear passed over Gerik’s features.
Walther, in the same fashion one would throw a baseball, whipped
both balls of wispy blackness straight at Gerik. As the mist
whipped around his body, the ground stopped shaking and Gerik was
brought trembling to his knees.
“No!” I screamed and tried again to punch and
kick the window out.
Still shaking, Gerik let loose identical
balls of flames in Walther’s direction. The flames caught and the
Skin Eater was instantly consumed by them. They disappeared just as
quickly. His eyes were no longer red, nor brown but black as death.
There were no signs of burns, no injuries at all. If I had not seen
it for myself I wouldn’t have believed that only moments ago he’d
been set on fire. Unharmed, his march toward Gerik continued.
He threw another round of black mist at Gerik
and my Viking fell face first into the dirt. His body jerked hard
once, twice and then stilled. Blood began pooling near his open
mouth.
“Somebody help him!” I screamed, pounding on
the window. “Help him!”
I scoured the room, deciding on a chair and
bashed it against the window. The window, a mix of glass and
plastic, after several beatings, finally popped from its
casing.
Blood gushing from his nose and mouth, Gerik
to pull himself up. Shaking, he managed to hit Walther again with
fire. And again Walther erupted in flames which were instantly
dissolved.
His laugh was the essence of evil. “You call
yourself a Roma?” Walther taunted. “You are nothing! Nothing!”
Walther blasted Gerik with another round of
mist. Choking and gagging, Gerik grabbed his head and screamed as
blood poured from ears.
My feet hit the ground and I took off
running.
“Trinity! No!” Jericho yelled.
Gerik’s head whipped around. “Djordji!” He
roared. “Grab her!”
My presence seemed to solidify something in
Gerik and he found the strength within to stand. Flames formed from
his hands even faster than he could send them flying toward
Walther.
Walther was having an increasingly harder
time holding off the assault but he was still holding his own. With
an incredible surge of black mist, he’d formed a shield of sorts,
stopping the flames from reaching him. Then, reversing their
direction with a flick of his wrist, he shot Gerik’s own fire back
to him.
But Gerik was quicker. Using his magic he
formed a miniature hurricane and sent it toward the flames. The
hurricane quickly consumed all the fire and spun off in a different
direction. New flames had formed in his hands, larger and darker
than before, yellow and orange with streaks of black.
Walther’s eyes went wide. Djordji’s hold on
my arms went lax.
“Gerik!” Jericho screamed. “There is another
way!”
“No,” He replied, his voice rough and
garbled. “There isn’t.” The flames flew from his hands and closed
in on Walther. His screams, I would bet, were heard for miles.
These weren’t like the other flames. This
wasn’t like any kind of fire I’d ever seen. The black wisps
writhing inside the flames seemed to take on a life of their own.
As the fire licked against Walther’s skin, the blackness looked
very much like shadows of arms and hands ripping away at his muscle
and tissue until nothing but steaming, smoldering bones and silence
remained. Not long after Walther had gone quiet, Gerik
collapsed.
“The bodies!” Jericho shouted out, “Make sure
the others are dead!”
The black mist surrounding the pile of
steaming bones had swirled upward into the sky then doubled back
toward where Gerik lay. It hovered over his body, touching and
probing him with its tendrils of darkness.
Then, in one vicious swoop, the black mist
entered his mouth and disappeared inside of him. Already violently
shaking, Gerik’s body jackknifed off the ground. I took off running
in his direction.
“Don’t touch him Trinity!” Stefan yelled. “He
used magic he shouldn’t have. There is no telling what happened to
him!”
“Gerik?” I whispered, crouching down next to
him. I reached out to move blood soaked hair out of his eyes. What
I saw made my heart stop.
Gerik’s eyes were as black as Walther’s had
been, not a drop of color remaining. Blood covered him from his
nose to his knees and his chest was heaving heavily forward, as if
something within him was trying to force its way out.
“Oh Gods, Gerik what did you do?” I
cried.
I jumped as Jericho put his hands on my
shoulders. He began to drag me backwards. “Stay away from him,
child.”
“We need to go,” Djordji said, sounding
panicked. “All of us need to leave. Right now.”
I turned to stare at them, disgusted. Gerik
had just saved countless lives and we needed to go? Leave him here
hurting? Or worse, to die?
With no warning, Gerik jumped to his feet and
let loose a horrifying roar. Black smoke poured from both his nose
and mouth.
Was he taller? Wider? He looked downright
massive.
“Stimati Dumnezeu ne salva,” Stefan murmured.
“The boy has horns.”
My gaze shifted to Gerik’s face. The skin had
split at his hairline directly above his eyes. An inch in diameter
black horns had grown upward over his head then curved down until
they reached his ears in sharp points.
Another roar, louder than the first, had me
covering my ears. His t-shirt and jeans were already torn and
hanging off of him yet the distinct sound of tearing could still be
heard as Gerik’s body continued to heave.
“Oh my Gods,” I cried.
It wasn’t only that he was growing; his skin
was actually splitting apart. Invisible claws were shredding him
across his chest and arms and revealing… scales? Diamond shaped,
shiny black scales appeared beneath the spitting skin until his
entire left arm and a good portion of his chest were covered in
them.
Stefan pulled me into his arms, trying to
turn me away. “Don’t look Trinity; this isn’t something you’re
going to want to see.”
“I’m not leaving him,” I whispered. “He won’t
hurt me,” I said, not knowing if that was true or not.
Stefan hesitated. He might have let go of me
if Gerik hadn’t chosen that moment to hit the ground with an ear
splitting scream.
He kept on screaming while black spikes
ripped through his back, each one not quite as thick or as long as
the one before it.
“Is he dying?” I managed to ask through my
sobs.
“No,” Stefan whispered, his voice shaking.
“Balaur…Gerik is becoming a dragon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hungary, 1078 A.C.E
The encampment was in ruins. Wagons had been
burned and tents had been shredded. Even the horses had been
killed.
And blood. There was so much blood.
The children too. What kind of monster would
order innocent babies put to death?
The men had been shredded to pieces. Their
heads and limbs lay severed from their torsos. The women and girls
who had been subjected to rape had been killed and left naked in
the same humiliating position.
And the children… Treime couldn’t even bear
to look at them again and see their tiny faces and hands covered in
blood.
She watched in horror as the Gaje soldiers
kicked the bodies of her people while they filled their sacks with
stolen belongings.
Shaking, Treime tried to reach Emilian
through the bond they shared when suddenly she was yanked by her
hair, causing her to stumble backwards into her captor.
“
My lord! I found another one!” A hand
reached around her and roughly groped her breast, pulling and
twisting until she cried out in pain.
Leaning forward, with rancid breath, he
whispered, “Maybe his lordship will let me keep you. Shame you’re
so fat though.”
“
What do you have there?” A short, pudgy
man laden with armor sat astride an impressive black stallion. He
leered down at Treime and her captor.
“
Murderer!” Treime hissed and both men
laughed at her.
Just then she felt the tug of Emilian through
their bond. He’d seen through her what had happened, what was
happening. But Treime knew he would never make it in time to save
her.
“
Are we going to kill her, my lord? Can I
have at her first?”
The man upon the horse smiled and she felt
her stomach roil. “She is very beautiful, isn’t she? I have never
seen such magnificent green eyes. Such a shame to waste such
beauty. Do what you will and then bring her to me, I’m going to
take her home.”
The man behind Treime shifted and swung her
around to face him. Pushing her back on the ground with one hand
around her neck, he lifted her tunic and began fumbling with his
own.
Treime, barely able to breathe and about to
be raped, lifted her freed hands and focused all her energy toward
the man trying to push his way in between her legs.
Flames erupted from her palms in a burst of
white light. She threw them forward at the man astride her. He let
loose a high pitch scream as the fire engulfed him, then flung
himself backwards in an attempt to run from her.
His hysterical screaming and flailing
movements stopped suddenly and the flaming man fell to the ground.
The man covered in armor stood behind the fallen man, his sword
firmly embedded in his back.
He looked amused. “My dear, you’ve done
nothing but further my desire for you. A sorceress is a greater
asset then a bedmate.”
He gestured at a few of his men. “Grab her,”
He told them. Staring at Treime with fear in their eyes, none of
the men moved.
“
GET HER!” He screamed. “Now!”
At least ten men suddenly rushed her and she
didn’t even try to fight them. She couldn’t, her body was too weary
from her advanced state of pregnancy to call upon anymore magic.
They bound her wrists and ankles and gagged her. Throwing her in
the back of a mule cart, they kept their swords pointed at her
belly in case she tried to use her magic again.
Treime couldn’t stop the tears that came as
she was taken away. They weren’t for her family or her clan, for
they were already gone. They were for the fates of Walther and
Emilian and their unborn child. She cried until she had no tears
left to cry and then her soul began to weep.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Crouched by a tree, blood still dripping from
the enormous black wings that had now fully unfolded from his back
Gerik was watching me the way a wild animal watches their prey. It
didn’t matter how small the movement, I could rub the bottom of my
nose, twitch a toe and his eyes would catch it, his nostrils
flaring as if the inconsequential action had stirred something in
the breeze.
His transformation was complete. Lock, stock,
fangs and a tail.
I was dumbfounded by the sheer size of him.
He hadn’t been small before, but now, he must be at least 240
pounds and nearly seven feet tall.
I didn’t have words. Even if I’d had them I
doubted I would have been able to speak them aloud.
Arms wrapped tightly around herself, Drina
walked up to stand beside Jericho.
“He can no longer stay here,” She whispered
loudly, her eyes never leaving Gerik. “There are rules and he has
broken the most important one. We cannot allow any more devastation
to befall the clan.”
Jericho, with tears in his eyes, looked sadly
at Gerik and nodded in agreement.
Gerik’s black eyes burned right through the
Baró until Jericho was forced to look away.
“You must go son,” Jericho said quietly, his
eyes on the ground. Drina, looking not the least bit sorry,
advanced on Gerik.
“There is nothing here for you any longer,”
She told him. “You have no clan, no family, nothing.”
Gerik jumped to his feet, his entire body
constricting. With a leathery snap, giant black wings unfurled
behind him casting shadows over his towering form. Unfazed, Drina
still continued toward him. She stopped several feet from him,
leaned forward and began speaking to him in hushed tones.
“Mine!” Gerik suddenly roared. Pushing past
Drina, Gerik half ran, half flew at me.
I took a brief moment to thank every single
god and goddess out there that Xan wasn’t here. I’m willing to bet
the Parthenon that there was no bigger high than that gained from
fighting a dragon for the love of a girl.
“No!” Jericho cried out, his panic clear. “Do
not touch her! Your magic Gerik! Think! Please think about
this!”
Then I was airborne. The wind rushed up
beneath me and the sky grew closer. I squeaked and buried myself in
Gerik’s chest. His grip on me was firm and so, instead of having a
full blown panic attack, I closed my eyes and concentrated on
remembering to breathe.
Minutes later, we landed somewhere in the
woods where the trees grew thicker, larger than the ones near camp.
There were no beaten paths to follow. I was trapped.
He set me down gently but refused to let me
go.
My fingertips brushed over the hot skin on
his stomach and the warm smooth black scales over his arms and
chest. Who knew a human being could possess such fire and not
incinerate or die from fever.
And the magic. It was all over him. You
couldn’t be this close to him and not feel it, not be drawn to it
and swept away inside of it. It was as if all life around Gerik had
come to a standstill. No birds chirped, no insects buzzed, even the
air didn’t dare move, as if it too was afraid of getting sucked
away in Gerik’s overwhelming presence.