“The opal!” Sonora cried and pointed, and soon the dragon was swimming off, charging toward the direction of Lilith who wasn’t running away, but was headed toward the shore.
The box that’d held him suddenly dissolved. Giles crashed into the water, slipping beneath its turbulent waves. Shifting quickly to shadow, he bolted out of the liquid cocoon and flew to Lilith’s side.
The chit was standing on the beach, shifted back to female form and smirking as she clutched the stone in her palm.
Sonora and her sisters were screaming, slapping the waters with their tentacles as Ankh continued to shoot jets of steam from her nostrils. As a shade, Giles could not help in the fight.
So he shifted quickly to physical form and dropped onto the back of Leeta, yanking a steel dirk from his boot and in one smooth motion grabbing the back of the dragon’s skull while placing the dirk against its throat.
The serpentine head hissed, flicking its black tongue in and out as Sonora screeched.
“This steel is strong enough to cut through dragon scales. Give us safe passage or I’ll kill her!” he growled, shoving the blade in just a tiny bit deeper, almost to the point of puncturing the neck.
“No!” It wasn’t the dragon who yelled it, but Lilith.
She was staring at him, wide-eyed, and visibly grinding her molars. “They will not harm us while I carry their precious water stone. Come to me.”
Grimacing, he moved his blade, this time actually penetrating the tough hide into the tender flesh beneath. A drop of blood welled on his blade before falling to the water beneath. The moment it landed the water turned a frothy, bloody red around the dragon and began to snap and jump with razor sharp fins that appeared as though from nothing.
His nostrils flared. “If I release it they will kill us, Lilith. That is what a dragon does. Use the wish!”
How could she not understand that? He’d thought them safe when they crossed into the canyon earlier in the day because he’d spotted no water, but now that they’d intruded on the sanctity of a dragon’s nest there would be no mercy from this violent creature.
“Give us our stone and we shall let you live,” Sonora begged with tears glimmering in her eyes as she reached helplessly toward the shore.
Lilith chuckled. “You think me a fool, don’t you? I’ll tell you what happens if I give you this stone now.” Her smile turned to a snarl. “You’ll slay us where we stand and pick your teeth with our bones. No. I will keep this stone—”
“You would condemn us to death!” Sonora’s voice boomed with thunder and the world around them heaved. Thick slabs of rock broke away from the mountain’s side, sliding into the water with hard smacks.
The fins below began to leap out of the waters. And the creatures attached to them were not fish at all, but green-skinned men with webbed feet and hands and smushed faces that had little more than black slits for mouths and eyes.
Lip curling in revulsion, Giles shifted just enough to give him leverage to decapitate the beast. But again Lilith held out her hand.
“You do that and there will only be more. She is part dragon, part hydra. You cannot kill her that way, Giles!”
Her words stayed his hand. “What?” He glanced up.
There was a freneticism to her eyes that told him she did not lie. A hydra was an ancient, mythological creature. One of fancy and folly, told as bedtime stories to scare little children. A serpent-headed monster that always had at least two heads, but most times three, and cutting off one head would only cause three more to take its place. Meaning the situation could go from dire to nightmarish in a heartbeat.
“Dragon, I seek to barter,” Lilith turned to Sonora.
“You’d dare.” She flashed her fangs. “You’ve nothing to barter, you’ve stolen our stone. I will fillet you both, starting with the man.”
Twisting, she reached out for Giles, clawed hands within inches when she let out a blood-curdling scream. Grabbing hold of her head, she cried out, “Stop. Stop.”
The other two heads were similarly screeching, wailing, and undulating their long, sinuous necks back and forth, their tentacles slapping the waters violently.
Lilith was breathing heavily, clawing at the stone with her nails. “You will not kill us. You will give us safe harbor. Once through, I shall drop the stone in your waiting hand. Do we have a deal?”
Faces contorted into demonic masks of fury, Sonora thundered, “Deal.”
Eyes swiveling immediately toward Giles direction, Lilith beckoned him to her. “Come here, knight. Quickly.”
Tucking his dirk away, Giles morphed back into shadow. He was angry, relieved, and so bloody confused by the time he got to her it was all he could do not to yank her into his arms and kiss the top of her head while growling at her that she’d been foolish to do what she’d done.
“Grab my hand,” Lilith rushed out, “and get us out of here now!”