My knees crack against concrete. My palms scrape open. The leash bites deep into my skin.
"Talon!"
The young vampire in front of me stares down at me with a cold green gaze. “You’re not as powerful or dangerous as she said.” He leans over, yanking the chain to bring my face to his.“Best not to chance it though. Won’t let you fuck me to death, even if you are hot.”
I feel a pulse. It starts in my chest then drops lower, deeper.
Something in me rises, uncoiling from the center of my being, and I gasp.
Power—sexual, ancient, hungry—ripples beneath my skin. My lips part. The vampire holding me suddenly freezes, eyes wide. His grip falters.
I taste something electric between my teeth.
The world tilts. My power wants out. I don’t know what it’s trying to do, only that it is trying to dosomething.
A boot smashes into my stomach. A cough explodes from me with equal violence as I double over and cradle my center.
“What the fuck were you doing, witch?” he demands.
When I lift my head, I connect with Talon’s gaze. Another two bodies are ash at his feet, but he’s still outnumbered and overwhelmed.
My left eye just about explodes from my face as I'm backhanded. I groan, the slippery metallic taste of my own blood filling my mouth, the inside of my cheek cut along my teeth.
A blast of heat rolls over me.
Through my blurred vision, I meet Talon's eyes. They flare with a fiery orange hue, like embers born of fury. The intensity builds, and the orange deepens into a molten, liquid gold, swirling and shifting as if alive. Suddenly, they burst into flames, fierce and consuming, casting flickering shadows across his face.
A growl erupts like an avalanche, shaking the very air as the sky splits open. Wings explode from Talon's back, wide and violent, soaking wet and shimmering with firelight and rain.
The storm breaks as Talon surges upward, dragging three vampires with him. His whole body pulses, orange-lit fissures racing across his scales, glowing like molten fault lines. I watch in horror and awe as heat radiates off him in blistering waves.
Bones crack like gunfire beneath his skin. His spine arches, limbs elongating. Scales rip through flesh in a rapid sweep as if his very skin is being rewritten by fire. Claws replace fingers. His jaw stretches. Horns burst from his skull.
The vampires claw at him, hissing and snapping, trying to drag him back down even as they cry out in a panic.
A whip of his arm sends one vampire crashing into the wall with a wet crunch. Another tries to leap on his back but is smacked away by a powerful wing. Another is incinerated by a blast of fire that erupts from his mouth.
My breath stops. It shouldn’t be possible, but there he is in full, complete Dragon form.
He’s beautiful. Terrifying.
Talon’s tail slams a metal dumpster into twisted shrapnel. Then he turns, unleashing a torrent of flame into the alley. The blast lights up the rain-slick darkness, the blast lights up the rain-slick darkness, the way sunlight floods a cathedral at high noon. Vampires scream, their silhouettes writhing in the inferno before collapsing into ash. One by one, he hunts them down without mercy. The fire rolls forward, cleansing the alley of every bloodsucker in his path.
There are more than I thought. So many hidden in the shadows. The sheer number that had come for us makes my blood run cold.
The vampire who yanked my leash and dragged me to my knees tries to run.
With a thunderous flap of wings, massive claws hook under the vampire's ribs, and he lifts, screaming, into the night sky.
For a breathless second, they’re suspended above the warehouse rooftops. Then Talon tears him apart midair, flinging his halves in opposite directions. Blood rains down, mixing with the storm.
I stumble to my feet, soaked and trembling, unable to look away. The whole stretch is empty now. No more movement. No more fangs. Just scorched concrete, chunks of charred limbs, and blood seeping into the storm drains. The rain pelts metal and concrete with a steady rhythm, washing it all away.
Movement snags my eye. A vampire slips behind a row of crates, Talon’s torn scale and the still-wet blade gripped tight as he disappears.
And then Talon falters.
The flames die in his mouth. His body cracks and shudders, and shifts. Scales retract. Bones shrink.
