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Chapter Eighteen
“I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.”
—Lucille Ball
Sorin shoved Divina and Ere behind him in the same move that he engaged the closest zombie soldier.
Ere, surprisingly, didn’t stay back as he usually did. After Sorin disarmed and dispatched his first bag of bones, he tossed Ere a short sword and shield, then immediately charged a second foe.
Now armed, Ere managed to hold his own against two skeletal attackers that came at him at once. He wasn’t aggressively pushing them back as Sorin did, but he held his ground. And in so doing, he and Sorin protected Divina at their rear, shielding her from the battle.
While the men engaged the undead soldiers, Divina couldn’t tear her gaze from the hypnotic, malevolent stare of the serpent twisted around the tree.
It watched them from its higher vantage point, forked tongue vibrating, spiked tail rattling. The ugly, overgrown snake opened its jaws wide, almost entirely split in two, then spat rock-like objects onto the ground below.
At first, Divina thought they were missiles or poison fired at Sorin and Ere. But, no, they wereteeth.
The snake was spitting out its own teeth (of which it had many more to spare) into the ground. Those teeth sank beneath the soil as if some unseen force sucked them through the dirt.
A few moments later, boney hands appeared just like before. Followed by the torsos and legs of fully armed, undead soldiers.
It became crystal clear to Divina, Ere and Sorin that the snake was producing more soldiers faster than they could defeat them. And it didn’t appear that the serpent was in danger of running out of teeth. It had hundreds of them tightly packed in double rows on both the top and the bottom of its jaws. Apparently, it also regrew teeth at an alarming rate. Like sharks, it had an infinite supply.
They were so fucked!
Divina couldn’t just stand there and watch the massacre as it was unfolding before her. Ere was already tiring, unused to sustained battle. And eventually, Sorin would too.
They were not powerful immortals in this land, this time. They were slightly superhuman in strength, stamina and healing ability. But nowhere near the power they wielded in their Beast forms, as the black dragon and the phoenix.
Divina herself was next to useless in human form. There was no way she could “charm” her enemies in this situation. And her human body was so small and soft. Too frail. Too easily broken.
Her heart pounded with adrenaline and fear. Her pulse throbbed with desperation, frustration.
While they battled the snake and its undead soldiers, who knew what Andros was enduring in the in-between of the Underworld. Hades hadn’t mentioned a time limit for their task to retrieve the fleece, but Divina knew of gods well enough that there must be one.
Gods were ruthless, conniving and untrustworthy. They never made deals to “help” mortals or immortals. They only made deals to benefit themselves, even if it was to watch the creatures beneath them struggle for their entertainment.
Had Hades merely set them on a journey of no return? Was Andros dying even now in whatever prison Hades had locked him in?
Divina couldn’t bear it.
She shook all over with terror and love and desperation, until her bones rattled and her teeth chattered.
When she witnessed Ere fall back to one knee, Sorin shouting at him to get up, but too busy engaging three zombies at once to help his Mate, something rose up within Divina’s fiery hot core.
Like an explosion radiating outward from her heart to every extremity. Until white hot flames consumed her, drowning out her roar of pure power—
As she transformed into the Quetzalcoatl dragon.
With a flap of her multi-colored wings, she lunged from the ground toward the serpent twined around its tree. As she rose, she extended her talons and grasped a handful of zombie soldiers in each claw, crushing them to bones and dust within her iron grip.
Trusting Sorin and Ere to deal with the rest, she went directly for the source—the serpent guarding the fleece with its jaws spread wide, about to launch another barrage of teeth.
Divina had never been a fighter.
Even in dragon form, she was more of a peacock than a snake. Most snakes were predators, after all, able to hunt their food and ward off threats. Divina was more like a bird. And not the raptor kind either. The preening, pretty kind who fluffed their feathers for show.
But she was channeling all of her serpent side now as she hovered above her enemy and clamped a claw each on the top and bottom of her hissing foe’s jaws.
