THE MOMENT we arrive at North’s offices, I feel a grim hope start in my chest. The largest number of TacTeam operatives that I’ve ever seen are here, all of them dressed and ready to move out as they stand in neat lines the way that they’ve been trained to.
Vivian and Unser look over the crowd with stern and discerning eyes, but I’ve known them for long enough to know that they’re happy with what they are seeing. A lot of work in a very short amount of time might just pay off here.
Nox opens the door to the office, shepherding Oli in front of him as he covers her with his body protectively. Atlas doesn’t even flinch at the sight of it, something that has taken a very long time for us to work our way to. The two of them have finally found a middle ground, all that truly matters to either of them is our Bonded.
The way it should have been all along.
The moment we step into the office a gasping sound breaks out of Oli, and she steps around Nox as she flings herself in Sage’s direction.
I almost don’t recognize the girl that I grew up with and have known for my entire life.
The Sage back then, the one that Oli had first met and befriended, was a broken shadow of herself. A girl who had been manipulated by the Resistance into losing one of her Bonds, rejected by our community, and was everyone’s punching bag for something she had no control over. The girl who befriended Oli because she saw something in my Bonded that everyone else missed, a good heart. Now we’re here, one of her Bonded kidnapped, and the rest of her Bonded Group is in a mess over it.
Everyone except Sage herself.
She catches Oli and holds her shoulders. “I need you to help me bring him back, Oli. I need you to help me find him.”
I’m happy her words come out strong, like she’s full of fight, brimming with strength and power. I feel weirdly proud of her in this moment.
She’s not going to let this break her.
“Of course. I’m going to hunt him down, drag him home to you, and then I’m going to set my bond on anyone and everyone involved in taking him in the first place. I’ll eat all of their souls for you. Someone get me some matches, I’m ready to light something on fire! I can’t believe they would go after him like this.”
A grin stretches over my lips, pride swelling in my chest as the Draconis wakes inside of me. It likes the way she’s talking. It likes the promise of bloodshed and vengeance.
Sage scoffs under her breath. “You don’t need matches, I’m coming with you.”
“We all are,” Felix says, stepping forward with a bulletproof vest already covering him.
I scowl at him for a second, but as his eyes flick over us, he shrugs. “I’m not going to risk anything happening to him, getting him home. The rest of our Transporters aren’t as strong as he is, and anything could happen on the jump. It’s just not worth it. Sage is already going to be using so much energy in fighting, and I’m not going to let her risk herself. I’m going.”
He sounds so strong and sure about it as he bends down to grab one of the Tac helmets at his feet. He always did run headfirst at things. Even being a Healer, he had never really been too concerned about what could happen to him out there. He’d been on the football team our entire way through middle school, high school, and then college. He’d always been just as physically active as the rest of us, even knowing that his path in life was going to lead to hospitals and not the field.
It’s working in our favor, though.
No other Healer is so quick to sign up to travel like this.
“We’re all going. We’ll all be there to bring him back.” Wick steps up, his hand slowly sliding down Sage’s arm until his fingers thread through hers carefully, as though he’s waiting for her to pull away.
She doesn’t.
She’s definitely taking strength from him right now, and I look around to find that even Riley looks determined.
I don’t want to voice my concerns about him coming with us on the mission, considering the state he’s been in. If North and Gryphon have made the call to let him go, then who am I to question that?
Instead, I step forward and look at the giant screen in front of us showing the map of the Transport zone. It was highly populated just a few hours ago, making it a safer jumping point. The Resistance historically haven’t wanted to hit major cities unless they’re sure that they can take the area.
It looks as though a bomb has flattened an entire suburb.
A whole block of apartments is now nothing but rubble, even more senseless destruction underneath their belts.
I glance up to meet North’s eyes, and he nods at me as though we’ve come to an agreement, then Atlas as well. He’s slowly checking in with each of us before we head off on our mission.
“Our god-bond target did this. It has Resistance with it, but our main concern is that it’s one of the god-bonds trying to lure us out.”
“It succeeded,” Oli snaps, and North only nods his head at her.
“We always knew that they’d come after our friends first. Unfortunately, they found a crack in our security and exploited it. We knew that there’s always the chance for something like this, but time is not on our side here. We need to go in, find him, and kill everyone we can.”
North chooses his words carefully.
Normally, he tries to sugarcoat things—‘take people out’, ‘deal with them’—and all the other words that the council have used to make the missions feel less like acts of war.
This time, there’s no need for it.
This time everyone is clear on what we’re doing.
They’ve taken one of our own, and we won’t stop until we get him back.
I’M EXPECTING Oli’s bond to kick up a fuss about whichever Transporter is chosen to move us. The moment that everybody starts heading off towards their Transporters of choice, Nox grabs her by the elbow, spinning her his way as his eyes and the skin of his arms and his neck slowly turn black.
I can see North hesitate, his worry palpable, but Nox cuts him such a savage look that his mouth snaps shut and he accepts that this isn’t something he can fight his brother on.
Instead, he grabs the Transporter we’ve been assigned and snaps, “Hurry up, we need to beat them there.”
Atlas and I move swiftly to him as well, grabbing his arm. We move into space, everything melting around us before suddenly becoming clear again with that tell-tale pop noise.
We find the smoke beginning to form slowly, morphing up into the solid form of a person, but it’s as interesting to watch them shift through it here as it was having Nox appear in the bedroom. The two of them suddenly appear in the shadows as they arrive. One second, there’s nothing, and the next, my Bonded is here with us. The anxious energy that had begun to build up in me eases off the moment I can see her again.
Gryphon takes half a step towards Oli, then his eyebrows shoot up his forehead as she smiles at him with a slight shake of her head.
“I don’t feel sick,” she says quietly in a pleased voice, the surprise and wonder evident in her tone.
There’s a Shield in place, so the chance of a surprise attack right now is low, but North and Nox move into military mode the moment that Oli steps away from them and into Atlas’ orbit.
Sage and the rest of her Bonded Group arrive shortly after, moving over to us as Sage mumbles quietly to Oli, “I hate Transporting with anyone who isn’t Kieran. It feels gross.”
Oli nods, quietly slipping her hand into her best friend’s as she offers her what little comfort she can.
The entire situation is manageable right now, but it’s teetering on the edge of becoming worse.
Gryphon murmurs to Sage, “Can you feel anything? Can you feel if he’s nearby, or anything from him at all?”
She scowls a little as she closes her eyes, but she shakes her head pretty quickly. “He’s blocking me out. Whatever’s going on is probably not pleasant, but it’s not strong enough now to leak through the way it would if he’s in too much pain.”
Oli sighs with a nod. “That makes sense, but at least it’s survivable. Is it strange that I already know exactly how much pain that is? Never mind. He’s going to be okay. I promise you, Sage.”
Gryphon frowns at the mention of the torture that Oli had endured, and I understand that completely sick feeling sinking into my gut at the very idea of it. Before I can spiral too much about the torture she’d endured, Gryphon starts directing everyone.
The teams are made up of a fifty-fifty split, half of them being Tac operatives and half being the newcomers we’ve had to train. That way, when he starts using hand signals, at least half of each team understands what he’s saying and can direct the rest.
The shield that’s in place is strong, but not strong enough to give us a clear vision of what’s happening outside of it. We already know that it’s going to be bad from the surveillance footage that we had, and Nox sends one of his shadow creatures out to get eyes on the situation before we let the shield down.
He curses under his breath for a moment and then sends through the mind connection, Prepare yourselves. It’s so much worse than what we were expecting.
I watch everyone square their shoulders. Oli squeezes Sage’s hand right before she drops it, widening her stance and rolling her shoulders back as she prepares herself for whatever is to come. I swallow roughly for a moment, and then I reach out to the Draconis, making sure that it is not only awake but prepared to shift the second that I might need it.
It isn’t just ready, it’s hungry.
Hungry to do everything that it can for our Bonded to prove itself to her, to let her know that even though it had the longest cycles between lives, it loves her just as much as any of the rest.
The moment the shield drops, I shift without fully processing what’s happening, the god-bond taking over and shredding through my Tac gear as though it’s nothing but tissue paper.
Atlas curses and moves Oli into his arms to get her away from me, but I’m grateful he does when a bullet whirrs past him and buries itself in my scales. It must be a reasonably low caliber because it doesn’t quite penetrate my skin, but I feel it all the same.
My bond lets out a roar. I hear the chatter of everyone around us, but the Draconis doesn’t care for any of it. All it cares for is my Bonded and eating every last one of the Resistance until we’re sure that she is going to be safe.
There’s a rumble all around us as we begin to move, and I have to prompt it not to step on any of our own people. I remind it that they are just as invested in keeping our Bonded alive as anyone outside of our Bonded Group can be. It’s not particularly happy about making such concessions, but it does tiptoe around them until it has enough room for our wings to take flight.
I get the same rush as we take to the air as I did the very first time I’d shifted into a small bird when I was a teenager, the same shot of adrenaline to the blood. It’s addictive in the best way.
The Draconis looks around the area, hunting for our prey. Curiously, the buildings here aren’t burning. Every other fight we’ve gone into has been full of ash and fire and smoke that burns my lungs for days afterwards, the taste of it sticking in the back of my throat.
It’s not until we do our first pass over the city block that I see it. The god-bond is an Elemental, but it’s not using fire, if it even has access to it.
There’s an entire suburb here that’s been frozen solid. Watch out for ice, I send through the mind connection to everyone, and the Draconis is very unhappy with this.
I reach out to it and it sends back a small snippet of memory, something that it can’t explain in words but can show me through images. A god-bond sent icicles that were sharpened to a point flying through the air. They skewered the Draconis that was already injured and unable to access its fire. Then there was a long, slow arc through the air until it came crashing down to the ground, a slow and painful death at the hands of a god who murdered our Bonded.
A vengeful god who wants nothing more than everyone to suffer, the madness of living so many lives alone having eaten away at it until there was nothing but chaos and destruction left.
The Draconis doesn’t want to kill the god.
It wants to find it, snap every bone in its body, disable its power, and then deliver it to the Eternal to feast on. It wants to destroy it in such a way that it will never exist again, and with the painful memory of the impact of those icicles fresh in my mind, I can’t agree with it more.
Let’s hunt.
I LEAVE the Draconis to hunt as it knows best, instead shifting my consciousness to keep track of where Oli and the rest of the Bonded Group are. I do it just to reassure myself that she’s safe at all times, because honestly, letting the god-bond take over makes me feel a little bit useless. I watch, though Atlas and Nox stay with her at all times. They make a surprisingly adept team at protecting her while she moves through the rubble with Sage and her Bonded Group as they work together to find Kieran.
He’s in there somewhere, trapped by the god-bond as bait for the rest of us.
Gryphon and North take up the mantle of finding it, using the path that the Draconis is taking as a guide for where to look. I find myself surprised for a moment that Nox isn’t also insisting on proactively looking for it as well, until it occurs to me that he doesn’t have to; the Draconis fills in the blanks here for me.
The gods have always gone after the Eternal first.
They enjoy nothing more than breaking our spirits. If he stays with her, the god-bond will simply come to him. This way, he’s able to keep an eye on our most treasured Bonded and have front row seats to whatever it is that the god-bond is planning.
I watch as the Draconis takes out legions of the Resistance, all of them staring up at us in horror as we fly over and breathe pure fire on them.
I already knew that the entire Resistance would know about the Draconis by now, but hearing about a lizard the size of a bus that can fly and breathe fire and seeing it in action are clearly two very different things.
I feel like Oli’s bond now, a savage satisfaction at seeing the awe and horror on their faces. They deserve every second of their fear, and they deserve the fiery death I’m going to give them too.
I feel nothing as they burn.
I don’t feel any sort of guilt or sadness, but I also feel no joy either. I feel nothing but hollow at these brutal acts of war, perpetuated and manipulated by the madness of those who continue to return as we do.
It’s not until I have a vast section of the Resistance cornered and burning that they finally set a plan against me in motion, sending bullets and some sort of projectile that looks like a fucking harpoon through the air. They’ve clearly been tailor-made just for me, the design an echo of those from the past.
The Draconis moves into a rolling spiral to get away from it, dodging everything that they shoot at us and moving faster than ever before. They were prepared for the creature they had faced in the past, but not this one. Not the one that has the power of my Bonded thrumming through my blood as I cut through the air with ease.
A bullet finally skims the soft underside of my belly, but as quickly as I feel the burn, it heals. The power my Bonded sends pushes into me, healing me as she takes souls from the Resistance that make their way through the rubble towards them. All of it is making me feel as though I am as indestructible as the Cleaver as well.
Bullets begin to rain down on those on the ground as they change tactics, moving towards the Eternal once more, and I’m taken by surprise as Sage’s Bonded Group joins the fight.
I’m expecting a wall of flames or something to be moved telekinetically, thanks to Riley. I’m not expecting huge balls of fire to rain down on the troops as Sage and Wick work together with Riley, sending burning debris everywhere as the ground lights up around them. I watch as Riley lifts a bus and Wick sets it on fire, his eyes flashing white as he calls on his Flame ability.
He might not be as strong as Sage, but he’s smart enough to know how to best use his Gift, teaming up with Riley as they throw vehicle after vehicle. I watch as the gas tanks light up and the vehicles explode as they hit the ground, bolts and pieces of metal acting as shrapnel as they tear through the crowd. The Shield kicks into place around them as the next spray of bullets come out, and the Draconis shifts paths once more to send out another spray of liquid fire, flames exploding through the smoke as the screams of the injured begin to fill the air.
Those who have hurt my Bonded do not deserve a quick or clean death. I told her they would die screaming, and scream they shall.
I agree wholeheartedly with my bond.
As we circle around once more, I spot exactly what we’re looking for, directing the Draconis until it spots it as well. A freshly laid patch of ice, one that wasn’t there on our last pass, and a sign that the god is still working here.
With nothing more said between us, the Draconis swoops down, ready to prove his devotion to our Bonded and the god within her.
