Page 64 of On A Rift's Edge
Lyall spat blood on the floor. “The hell I am. This whole custom is fucking ridiculous.”
He scanned the room, eyes wild, and gave a sigh of relief as he spotted Kat before he tensed again.
“Where’s Remi?” Lyall pointed at a spot on the floor. The room was a mess, with broken furniture and toppled chairs lying on a blood-spattered floor. “He wasn’t moving after Cesmak hit him.”
Giana gave a choked cry.
Kat ran over to where Lyall was pointing, with Giana coming up behind him. The two of them hunted through the debris on the floor, and Kat did his best not to panic. Remi was larger than an Earth chinchilla, but tiny compared to the two ferocious hellhounds who had trashed the place fighting each other. There was no sign of him. Arimanius was slumped against a nearby wall, his broken leg in front of him. Teo was nowhere to be seen.
“No.” Lyall limped up to them, sounding frantic. “He has to be here somewhere.”
The floor swayed under Kat’s feet, and he had to reach out to grab Giana before she fell. He waited for another hellmouth to open or a water portal to float down from the ceiling, but the shaking only worsened, sending the dusty corporate art on the walls crashing to the floor.
Every window in the space shattered, and Kat flung himself on Giana as they both dropped to the floor, glass and dust falling over them.
A different roar resounded through the space, and Kat scrambled to his feet. He knew that sound.
Kaveh was here, as an Azdaha drakone, and Remi was missing.
“Get underneath one of the doorframes.” Kat pulled Giana to her feet as Lyall came closer to him, his face grim. The two of them walked blind through thick swirling dust and debris.
The particles in the air cleared, and Kaveh rose above them, coils of black scales rising through the shattered floor. He had crashed his way up through the building, just as he had erupted from the dirt of the rodeo arena during his duel with Rhys.
His giant reptilian head swung from side to side, and he gave another cry that made the walls tremble and the dust billow up again. He was searching for Remi, his Matchmaker spouse, and if he couldn’t find him, or if Remi was badly hurt…
Kat didn’t want to think about what would happen, only what he could do to stop it. His mentor and friend had only been in his drakone form once before, and the lack of control over his violent tendencies had horrified him.
He stared up at Kaveh and at the drops of poisonous green fire dripping from his fangs. Kat couldn’t find any indication that the man he knew was inside the monster that towered over him.
“Kaveh.” Kat spread his hands in a calming gesture and ignored Lyall’s attempt to tug him backward. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll find Remi.”
The Azdaha drakone opened his jaws wider, yawning over Kat as if to devour him. Then the color of his eyes flickered, altering from metallic gold to a soft hazel. The gaping mouth closed.
Kat allowed himself a moment to take deep breaths before stepping forward and laying a hand on Kaveh’s scaled skin. It felt smooth and far warmer than he had expected. A shudder ran through Kaveh’s serpentine body at his touch.
Good. His friend had been able to transform back before, when he had battled his clan mate to save Remi. Human Kaveh would return, and they could all calm down and settle their differences peacefully.
Something flashed by Kat’s vision, and the quivering end of a golden spear appeared, the tip buried into Kaveh’s side. He hadn’t begun to process that his friend had been attacked before Lyall knocked him to the ground, covering his body with his own.
The Azdaha towering over them roared in fury, and green flame shot across the room. It splattered onto the cracked wall, the fiery toxin dissolving the outer layer and crackling over metal supports.
It must have been Cesmak. Kat’s rattled brain tried to make sense of what was going on. The weapon was gold, like all of the ones he had seen on her armor. Kaveh was hurt and enraged, and he could kill Lyall’s mother with his poisonous fire.
He could kill all of them with it.
Lyall rolled off Kat, shouting at him to run.
Kat had no intention of doing any such thing. He climbed to his feet, watching as Lyall walked toward Kaveh, presenting himself as a target and barking commands at his mothers in the hellhound language.
No, there wasn’t going to be any more of that sacrificial nonsense from Lyall.
Kat got a running start and slammed into Lyall, shoving him to one side. He had caught him off guard, and the normally agile hellhound staggered back.
“Kaveh, that isenough.” Kat didn’t like to yell at anyone, especially his best friend in terrifying dragon form, but he needed to get through to him. “You have to cut out the fireworks right now, before you bring down the whole building on our heads. Remi might be injured, and we have to find him. I need the real you, and so does he.”
The giant head swung down low, and the Azdaha regarded him with one gleaming eye.
The massive coil of scales fell in on itself, and a moment later a nude and dusty Kaveh reached out to hug Kat.
