Mentored in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

I looked back at her, not sure how to get her going. With Penny, it was easy—I just shoved her in front of danger. But how did you do that with a dragon?

My foot slipped and shot off Archion’s shoulder. My weight shifted and my body followed.

“Oh crap—” Archion adjusted immediately, but I held out my hand and slowed my fall with a hover.

Why wait? The plan started now.

Burn it all, I thought to Archion. Work the perimeter. Keep the way as clear as you can for when Ja gets here.

I righted myself so that my feet were pointed downward and then released my hover, falling fast. Near the ground, I firmed up the air around me, slowing my descent drastically, and dropped down in front of a very confused demon with five horns on his head, no eyes, and his dick swinging so low he should consider knotting the thing to keep it out of the way.

“Horns and a big Johnson don’t make you better at violence, idiot,” I said.

He startled, his hand slapping toward the sword strapped to a bare, furry hip. I punched him in the face. His head cracked back, and I reached beside him and yanked out his sword before torching him.

His high squeal indicated this sect would not take kindly to fire. Good.

He flailed his arms and ran, a horned torch.

“Stop, drop, and roll, bub.” I looked up as Archion flew by. The dragon opened his great jaws and blew fire at the ground, rolling over me and then scorching everything in its path. Demons came away from the walls, just now cluing in that there was danger in their midst. They clearly didn’t spend a lot of time getting attacked from the air. Or maybe at all. They didn’t seem very good at the violence game, given the way they threw up their hands and just took the fire as it blackened their skin or fur. More good news.

How the hell had Darius, Penny, and Emery gotten taken by a sect this bad at violence? Maybe there was something I was missing.

“Reagan!”

Cahal shot down from the sky, nearly to me. That was the problem with not having a plan: you nearly missed important moments, like when it rained grumpy druids.

I slowed his flight as his dragon bellowed, a thick wave of depression flowing over the area. It dragged me down for a moment before I labored to shake it off. Archion followed with a roar of his own, but that didn’t impact me at all, probably because of our growing bond.

Cahal wasn’t recovering so easily, though, arms and body stiff from Archion’s paralyzing roar, reaching for the sword I held.

“Come on. Push through it.” I grabbed Cahal around the wrist, the effect like thawing him out. He blinked and shook his head.

“Effective,” he said, and I felt a burst of pride. That was my dragon. I totally got the best one.

“Here. Hurry! If my dad isn’t on his way yet, he will be soon.” I handed over the sword before I sprinted toward the nearest door.

“You called him your dad,” Cahal said, running behind me and scooping me up with one hand. He held me tightly to his uncomfortably hard body, swirling his shadow magic over us.

“Stop. I want to kill people. Also, eat a donut. You could do with a little padding for situations like this.”

“You can kill people after we find the others. This will be faster.”

Annoyingly, he was right.

“Yeah,” I said as he ducked into the door and flattened us against the inner wall. Demons ran by, strapping armor to their bodies, trying to find the fight. What they’d find was fiery death from the sky. “He is my dad, after all. And after this, we’ll be even. If he wants to make up, great. If not, I’ll just call him a deadbeat dad and be done with it.”

Usually people like you have daddy issues, Cahal thought as he stayed near the wall and ran down the corridor. My feet dangled down his side, my toes occasionally touching the ground as he moved and dodged people. His shoulder clipped a demon and sent it reeling into the rushing crowd, which was large enough that this place definitely had more than just two stories.

“There is no usual for a person like me.”

He cut across the corridor at a gap in the onslaught, and I suddenly wondered how the hell we were going to get out of this place. They had a whole lot of people, it turned out. Without Ja—or even with her—we didn’t.

A faint echo of a dragon wail made my bowels watery. Not with fear, but like they would let go and I’d physically soil myself.

“What the hell,” I said softly as Cahal put on a burst of speed, cutting through a gap in the crowd heading to the front and to the other side, where a window looked out over the courtyard in the middle of the building. Weapons were strewn about in a way that suggested the demons had been training when the warning bells went off. Clearly, they were practice weapons, though they still seemed metal. Hardcore. The fae better be wary of going up against violence demons.