Page 71 of Dragon in Boots

“Hello?” Damien answered.

“Tailor! What the fuck is happening?” Votan roared.

Damien looked at his device and then at the man walking away. It suddenly clicked. “Cimil, what did you do?”

She shrugged. “Pure magic.” She waved her hands in the air. “Viva la revolution.”

Cimil loaded into an RV with the rest of the gods. She got behind the wheel and rolled down the window. “Ten o’clock sharp tomorrow, Sky baby! See you then.”

Cimil tore out of the parking lot, nearly taking down several Uchben in the process.

Damien turned to Sky. “Sky, what is this?”

She bit her lip. “Cimil promised to free my sister and nephew and give me a new body.”

“In exchange for?”

“She wants you all to herself. She says you’re instrumental to changing the world for the better.”

So this entire thing had been just another crazy, twisted Cimil plot to detach Sky from his life. Sky didn’t even have a clue that she’d gotten help from the very being who ratted her out to SBP.

Damien inhaled slowly, checking his rage. “Sky, you need to know that—”

“I’m sorry, Damien. But I really didn’t think you loved me. And honestly, I’m not sure it would’ve made a difference. Family first, yanno?”

“So you promised to dump me?”

“That and I can’t ever bother SBP again. Or the governor.”

He nodded at the ground, feeling his anger bubble.

She exhaled. “I have to go now. My family’s waiting.”

How could she do this to him?

“Tailor! Tailor, do not make me come there and strangle you!” Votan’s voice echoed over the cell.

Damien raised the phone to his ear. “I told you, Votan. I fucking warned you. Cimil is always ten steps ahead.”

“What the devil, man?”

“She was not raising an army. She was raising a new family.”

Damien hung up.I am done with all this.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Bernard, I know it’s a dragon lying there,” Jac said hurriedly, standing just outside her cottage after spending all night recapturing some of the world’s deadliest snakes, “but I don’t have time to explain. I have a plane to catch, okay?”

His eyes remained glued to the enormous ten-ton lizard. “Tha-that’s a dragon,” he stammered again.

“Yes, but I need you to focus on the animals…” Her voice trailed off. He still wasn’t listening. “Bernard!” She snapped her fingers in his face.

Bernard’s glazed-over eyes slowly unlatched from the flying battleship on the ground.

“Can you hold down the fort until I get back?” she begged. “Please? I shouldn’t be more than a day or two. I hope.”

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

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