It was both terrifying and breathtaking.
There were three heads, each unique. The left most head had a thin, oval-shaped face that hissed with a black forked tongue out at him, its glowing, gold-colored eyes never swerving from his face. The center most head was broad and had a round-faced inset with mother of pearl scales that gleamed from refracted rays of sunlight bouncing off them. That head glared at him with aquamarine eyes that seemed to him to be full of fury and brimstone, and on its head were two horns that curved delicately upward like a crown of ebony.
The right head gave him a lazy, sensual smirk.
The third head was no creature, but a woman’s head. A beautiful, bronze-skinned woman with one eye as blue as the deep ocean and the other eye as pale and green as a shallow lagoon. Her hair wasn’t hair at all, but a wriggling mass of black and teal banded sea snakes that hissed and snapped in his direction.
The woman spoke with a mouth full of shark teeth, “What have we here, sisters?”
Her voice was melodious and enchanting. Unnerving to hear.
She slinked slowly forward in the waters, a gargantuan beast of muscle and scales. The other two heads were no longer paying attention to him, but appeared to be scanning the horizon.
She smiled. “Hm. A man. A beautiful, dark-skinned man. I think we should keep you.”
As she drew closer, something inside of Giles reacted. Something visceral and soul-deep. His ability to hang on to his shadowy form weakened and he felt himself slowly return to his corporeal body against his will. Gritting his teeth, he stared at the now-laughing woman.
“What is your name?” In his home world of Delerium, to learn the name of a dragon was the key to possessing its power and harnessing it for your own.
Giles did not know whether those same rules applied to Kingdom; in fact, this creature was his first encounter with a dragon in several millennia. But he needed to free himself and get to Lilith—goddess only knew what was happening to her.
Power slammed into him, a resonant wave of it that made him growl and forcibly change. The creature was somehow controlling him.
She snorted. “I am no demon. You can do nothing to me by learning my name. I shall oblige you, male.”
Finally she was upon him and he didn’t know whether she planned to eat him or mate him. Reaching up a long, delicate woman’s hand, she caressed the side of his jaw with nimble fingers.
Up close she was terrifyingly beautiful. Part woman, part animal, both blended so perfectly that the mix wasn’t macabre. Rather than the long, reptilian neck of her sisters, the woman had a delicate one that led into femininely curved breasts and a slender waist, but below the waist she had no legs.
That was where her body and those of her sisters merged into a massive frame much larger than a whale’s. Her tail wasn’t split like a fish fin, but instead it was a writhing mass of bright pink and purple octopi tentacles.
The gills in the side of the center most head flapped with a sudden rush of water as the heads inhaled.
“I am Sonora. She,” she pointed to the left head, “is Leeta, and she,” she pointed to the center, “is Ankh.”
She moistened her lips and cocked her head in a serpentine bobbing and weaving motion.
“Where is your companion, male?” Sonora’s smile grew wider.
He swallowed, shoving at the box he was still trapped inside of. How had she reached into it to touch him and yet he could not move out of it?
“I have no companion,” he grunted, still trying to push through the barrier.
She hissed and lifted her hand as if to slap him. “Do not lie to us! We saw you, both of you. You thought to come into our home and steal our jewels.” She snarled, curling her lip, exposing the sharp array of fangs.
Shaking his head, he snapped, “We do not care a whit about jewels, we seek only to cross this canyon.”
Tipping her head back, she laughed. The snakes of her hair waved wildly about, many of them looking at him with a flat, black, merciless gaze.
“Man.” Her two-toned eyes caressed his body. “I will treat you as a prized jewel if you give me what I want. Where is the girl?” she growled and a jet of scorching steam bellowed from Ankh’s nostrils, spraying him.
Bellowing as the heat of it singed his flesh, Giles pounded on the box.
“Hey, snake face!” a familiar female voice growled. “Looking for me?”
Giles turned around just in time to see Lilith’s long red hood flap behind her as she jackknifed her body off the edge of the cliff, shifting in midflight into the form of her wolf.
The brilliant flash of fire soon gave way to the silky red pelt of her beast, and clutched in her mouth was a creamy white stone that sparkled as she ran.