Page 140 of Gemini Kings
I’m scrambling across the cushions, naked except for my go-go boots, with my hair streaming behind me and the fire licking at my spine. That same heat is burning inside me, a cone of fire in my core that’s spreading up and out like a mushroom cloud. My speed picks up, like there’s a strong wind under my feet that’s lifting me.
In fact, when I push off with my back foot and lurch through the air for that empty frame, I lift right off the ground with a lightning scream that deepens in mid-yell to a full-throated brassy roar.
I burst through the window in a blast of nuclear heat and spread my wings in a powerful downstroke that pumps my dragon body high above the haunted house on the hill.
I catch a crazy skewed glimpse of the rocky cliff and the churning sea way below and a sky full of stars and moon high above. Icy wind howls past my scales and my tail lashes the air. My body’s off-kilter and uncoordinated, my flight feels awkward and far from confident, and my proportions are definitely wrong. But I’m fueled by a cold white rage that lends strength to my wings like an atomic reactor that’s consuming every atom of emotional fuel I’m hurling into it and converting that fuel to pure energy.
I part my jaws and bellow in the lightning voice.
Thunder crashes and lightning forks from my mouth to rip the sky.
All my senses are telescoped. Tiny voices shout tiny words from tiny bodies far below. My ears swivel to pick up the chemical hiss of extinguishing spray. My long tongue snakes out to taste the acrid tang of smoke and the metallic burn of chemicals.
And despite the fact that it’s pitch black (because the power’s still out all over the island), my dragonish eyesight is hella sharp. The shadows that cloak this rugged island with its wooded slopes and the steep stairs of the village streets seem more gray than black.
Directly below, the heat signature of that room I just left pulses a fiery orange.
Well, hey. Look who’s seeing now in infrared.
A flicker of movement snags my gaze like the predator I’ve become. Three, four, five little darts of orange scatter along the cliff behind the villa.
Life forms.
Bipedal.
Fleeing their ugly mischief.
THEY ARE MY ENEMIES!
My jaws yawn in a resonant bellow that roars through my serrated teeth. Lightning forks from my mouth and gouges a smoking crater from the earth. Those tiny glowing figures scatter, their tiny screams rising to a terrified pitch.
Good. Let them know how it feels to fear.
But I’m still learning to use this new power. To direct it. It’s different this way, tricky, imprecise, when I can’t use my hands to cast. I’ve got these taloned forearms (yay, arms) but I already know they’ll be useless for casting.
I angle my wings to sweep around for another pass, but these enemies of mine are crafty. Now they’re racing back to Villa Hadrian. They’ll hide like rats inside the walls. I’d gladly tear those walls down to reach them and eradicate them from the planet.
But.
The whole school’s hiding in there somewhere. Hiding from the monsters. Mallory and the Hufflepuffs. Maybe even Ronin hasn’t gotten clear. He could be fighting the fire.
I howl my frustration and fury at the moon.
A sleek black form slices over that pearly disc, flashing past against the cold white light. Wings spread and jaws part around a roar like bronze thunder.
Our mate.
I croon to him, my beloved, my dragon king, the one who will rise to my mating flight.
A savage lust, even bigger than I am, thrashes and claws at my dragon form.
But my mate too has spied our enemy. He angles his massive body and plummets past, a column of crimson flame already pouring from his lungs to blaze through the night, though he’s still well beyond range of his target.
But he isn’t slowing. Those vile cockroaches who tried to hurt my mates will reach the villa first.
And my mate, in his rage, will ignite the whole building.
I trumpet a warning, but he’s way beyond reason. Screaming my frustration, I tuck my wings tight and plummet after him, jaws parting to release a warning fork of lightning that crackles harmlessly beneath him.
