Yeah, the bitch knew her, all right.
“Papa!”
They all turned at the sound of a young girl’s voice. She stood next to Paul’s body, horror on her face. She was too young to know of the past violence of the Fringe… hadn’t suffered loss. She turned to them, and fear gripped her.
The Carnelian smiled at the girl as though she were a tasty morsel.
“Run!” Violet shouted at her. “Get out of here!”
She froze for a moment, and Violet heard the Carnelian inhale, ready to singe her. The girl bolted, and Violet rammed the red Dragon before she could unleash her Breath. Most Fringers were quick on their feet, and this girl was no exception. Before long, she was out of sight. She’d be alerting her family, and they would come with a vengeance.
Kade stabbed the Carnelian in her rear flank, but she stifled her scream of pain. No, she didn’t want others coming. Violet didn’t either. The Slades would see them all as the enemy. She knew only one other thing about Diamonds: they were vulnerable where they’d removed their scale.
This Carnelian not only had the powers of a Diamond, she was one of the most powerful Dragons Violet had ever been around. This was how she killed those other Dragons—including Arlo—ambushing them and using powers beyond the norm.
Which meant she had killed a lot of Dragons and absorbed their power.
Violet engaged her while Kade climbed the tree behind her. He rubbed his fingers together in the way she well remembered—the taser. The Carnelian looked for him as she spit fire at Violet. Kade hooked his legs over the branch right over her head, swung down, and reached for her forehead.
She ducked away from his hand as though she knew exactly what he was trying to do. Then she reared up and struck him. He went with the momentum, spinning midair and landing on his feet.
Pure friggin’ grace.
He’d only just landed when the Carnelian spun, whacking him with her tail. He kept his balance and swept his dagger in an arc, cutting a swath of lightning from the tip of the blade. A regular dagger wouldn’t have made any difference, but Kade had his own magick. Like a welder’s flame, it cut into the scales. She threw her weight back, landing on Kade and crushing him.
Violet barreled into her, stabbing a claw into the hole the missing scale left. The Carnelian hadn’t taken a scale from anyplace crucial, but having something the size of a knife sunk into her flesh would hurt like hell.
“Bitch,” the Carnelian hissed, swinging her head at Violet, who ducked just in time.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Violet said, clamping her mouth around the Dragon’s arm. The need to kill charged through her blood, tingling in her fangs.
Kade grunted as he got to his feet, the only indication that he’d been hurt. He lifted his dagger above his head as blue sparks ran up the length of his arms to the dagger. It flashed with the same brilliant blue as he brought what looked like a bolt of lightning down at the Carnelian. The bolt hit the tree first, slicing it in half vertically. The Carnelian dodged the bolt but the half-trunk hit her, knocking her off-balance.
“The hell with interrogation,” he muttered, charging up the dagger again.
The Carnelian gained her footing as Kade brought the bolt down again, slicing into the top of her head. Blood poured down her face, and several of her “feathers” fell to the ground.
The air around her shimmered with a magick that blocked the bolt as it came at her again. She gritted her teeth, forming a shield Violet had never seen a Dragon create. The veins in Kade’s neck bulged with the effort to push through the shield. They were both going to burn their magick out, which would leave them weakened. But that was okay; then Violet would swoop in and kill the Carnelian.
Kade’s bolt crackled and fizzled at the same moment the shield evaporated. Violet charged at the Carnelian, who blasted her with a powerful stream of fiery breath. Violet fell backward, the fire singeing right through her scales, the heat stealing her breath away.
She blinked through watery eyes as the bitch readied another blast of breath. Magick shimmered over Kade’s body as he leapt with unnatural speed and height and landed on her back, grabbing the spikes along her spine. Only one small puff of smoke came out before she thrashed in her effort to knock him off. He used the spikes to climb along her back.
Be careful! One wrong move and you’ll have a spike impale you.
He knew what he was doing. He moved fast, got a grip around her bloody neck, where the scales were thinner and more flexible, and drew back his dagger. He obviously knew where their kill spot was, just beneath their chin. As the tip touched the spot, the Carnelian rammed him into a tree so hard she heard something crack in his body. Gods, she felt it. One of the spikes missed him by half an inch, spearing the bark. He fell on the other side of her, out of Violet’s view.
The Carnelian turned and lifted her hand, ready to drive knife-like claws down on him. Violet Breathed a stream of darts at her. The darts hit her shoulder, her arm—and Kade, who’d leapt up in the form of a shimmering tiger with huge claws of his own.
The Carnelian blew out a firestorm, obliterating the sight of Kade and forcing Violet to close her eyes or be blinded. She opened them as soon as she felt the heat diminish. The Carnelian was gone. Kade lay on the ground. Violet Catalyzed back to human and raced over to him, kneeling by his side. The violet glow of her spike pulsed at the center of his chest where he’d been hit. She’d been named for that color.
“Where’s the Dragon?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Gone. You injured her pretty bad. She retreated. Are you all right?”
“What the hell did you do to me?”
“That’s my version of your taser, only it paralyzes you physically, not magickally.”
