Queens and Monsters: A Vampire Shifter Romance (The Blood Falls Book 1)

I felt Dray fly away in a way I’d never felt him before. It was as if we were one even though I still stood on the shaking ground while he took to the sky. He was massive now. It made me feel so small. As if the world has suddenly grown infinite and I was simply a grain of sand on a beach.

The power and connection between us surged through my palm and into my heart. It mixed with something else. Something cold and electric at the same time. As I watched the strange dragons circle Dray, I realized it was them. We were all connected. Their energy was entirely different from ours and yet strangely familiar at the same time.

Dray screeched and shuddered a warning. I felt and saw their defiant reaction. It knocked me back several feet.

“Rhysa! Rhysa!” Gigi appeared in front of me, dirty and frantic. “You have to get out of here!”

“I can’t.” I showed her Dreadnought. “We’re connected. I need to help him.” I just needed to figure out how. Fast.

Gigi blinked. “But…you’re so exposed here.” She glanced around at the dead or writhing bodies. Everyone else had taken cover.

“I don’t have a choice.” I moved on instinct, pulling power from the Plane and using Dreadnought to channel that energy to Dray. “There’s no time.”

Gigi nodded once. “Then we’ll protect you.”

A moment later Saoirse, my cousin Ayleen, and Leena appeared with Gigi. They formed a circle around me, headed by my grandmother. “Our magic will keep you safe and the Wren’s shifting abilities will help your bond with Dray.”

Gigi gave me a little smile. “You’ve got this.”

“She does.” Saoirse nodded. “She was born for this.”

Overhead the dragons fought. Two against one was never good odds, but two dragons against one was even worse. I needed to level the playing field.

Dray spun away, forcing the strange dragons to collide. While they were disoriented, someone else tried to help with magic from the ground.

I heard Ryddyck in my head. They need to stop that. Now. I wasn’t sure if he really spoke to me or if I was just worried it was what he was thinking. I glanced at Gigi. “Tell the others to stop. They’ll only make this worse.”

Then I ignored everyone, trusting them all to do their jobs so I could do mine. The dragon’s egg throbbed in my palm. Dray needed energy to keep fighting. So I drew more power from the Plan and channeled it to him.

In a sudden burst he attacked one of the dragons, cutting a gash across its impressive chest. It screeched and spun away. Without knowing why, I knew Dray could handle the remaining dragon while I hunted down the wounded through the Plane.

I was no longer in my body. I was a sword with a mission. Time and space bent to my will as I followed the wounded dragon through the sky. It glanced back with its black shining eyes as if it could see me. Its dark eyes reminded me of Ryddyck. I could feel its beating heart, see beneath the scales and skin to the organ that gave it life.

No matter how fast it flew or how many circles it took, I followed right behind. The wound tried to heal, but the dragon was using all its energy to escape me, so instead the wound kept bleeding.

In the distance behind me I felt Dray as he fought the other dragon. Every blow. Every heated exchange of fire. Dray was winning then he wasn’t. The women around me kept murmuring words I couldn’t hear.

And then suddenly I was closer. The dragon was too hurt to keep avoiding me and had decided to turn and fight. I wondered what it saw. Did the Plan appear to it as well? Was I a ghost to it?

None of that mattered now though. It was something to worry about another day. Right now all I needed to do was stay focused on the beating chambers of its failing heart. Closer and closer until I ripped right through it with Dreadnought.

As the blade tore through its flesh, the dragon roared. I heard and felt the sound at multiple levels. Maybe even dimensions. It was an extraordinary beating of sound waves and pain.

And then it disappeared.

Everything became a blur as I was sucked back to my body at lightning speed. Trees and sky raced by. I stopped with bang, slamming back into my body with a gasp.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Gigi rushed forward and grabbed me as I fell to my knees. Dreadnought dropped to the ground beside me. “They’re gone!”

I couldn’t see anything while I sucked in breath after breath, but I heard Dray roar in the sky above at the same time I felt his relief. “Is he…is he okay?”

“Dray?” Gigi brushed my hair back. “I think so? It was bad though.”

I nodded. That meant he’d be exhausted. Much more than I was. “He’s coming,” I slurred.

Dray swooped down to the ground nearby. He staggered several steps before collapsing. The sudden weight of a dragon hitting the ground felt like an earthquake.

“I need…to…go to him.” I tried to stand up.

Gigi hooked my arm over her neck and nodded at Leena to do the same. “He’s not far,” Leena said. I would have sworn it was a whisper, but I suspect my hearing took a beating and she was speaking normally.

They walked me to his side and helped me kneel beside his enormous head. “Dray? It’s me.” He shuddered again. “You need to shift back, Dray. You can’t stay like this.” I felt him slipping further and further into his instincts–losing himself to his dragon half. It took all the power I had left to keep him anchored.

“He must transform back into a samhain or they’ll simply return.” Ryddyck appeared beside me, his hands clasped in a prayer-like gesture. “The death of the dragon caused the rift to close, but just barely.”

I placed my hands on Dray’s dragon face and closed my eyes. If he didn’t hear my words then I needed to get in his head the way he could mine.

Dray?

He stirred. Just a little.

Dray? My love? I need you. I need you now. Please?

That got his attention. His consciousness flickered.

Dray! Shift back to me now. It’s important.

The flicker grew into a flame and for the briefest of moments his dragon half focused until he recognized me. My love?

I kissed his rough dragon skin, fully snapping him out of his fog. Dray shifted beneath me, coming back to his normal form. Only now he was covered in gashes and bruises, naked and exhausted.

“Here.” Saoirse conjured a blanket. “Lie with him. You both need it. I’ll get the Doctor.”

Snuggling with Dray sounded like the best thing in the whole world, so I used what little energy I had left to nuzzle against his neck and press our bodies together. Gigi wrapped us up and then gasped.

“You!”

With the last shred of my consciousness I opened one eye in time to see my best friend go white and her mouth fall open in shock. “You. I dream of you every night.”

Ryddyck stepped into view. “And you are the woman from mine.”

“That’s exactly what I dreamt.” Dray frowned. “How is that possible?”

The Doctor stood over him, still healing Dray in the field of bodies. I felt much better after some sleep, but the Doctor promised I was next, no matter what I said. Gigi flitted between us like a nervous butterfly. Ryddyck stood off a ways watching her every move.

“Maybe we just have shared trauma and dreamt similar things.” I mean, come on. We both just did dragon shit and battled Dregs and zombies. It wasn’t like dreaming about flying in the clouds while someone rained fireballs down on us was totally out of the realm of possibilities.

“Rhysa.” Dray glared at me the way he tended to when he was frustrated with me. “You channeled with a dragon and you find shared dreaming a bridge too far? Really?”

Maybe? I fidgeted. “What do you think, Doc? Did we share a brain while we slept?”

The Doctor, understandably, looked a little worse for wear. He’d been healing nonstop since the battle began and Dray was a task he hadn’t handled before. His hands roamed over Dray’s shoulder, healing something I couldn’t see. Then he sat back and sighed. “I’m going to take a moment if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. In fact, I think I can take it from here.”

The Doctor frowned. “I believe you could, however I’d like to take one pass, just to be sure. The damage was extensive. I don’t say that scare you, however you need to be realistic.” He turned to me, probably because I was more reasonable than Dray. “A few minutes longer and we may not have gotten him back. The closest case I’ve had recently was you.”

I flinched. Feeling chastised even though I didn’t think that’s what the Doc was trying to do. “That bad, huh?” I remember thinking it was pretty fun in my mind. I could just float away and never come back.

“Worse.”

Shit. “Hopefully he’ll never have to shift into his other form ever again.”

Dray’s glare turned up ten notches. “Or maybe I’ll get better at controlling my other form.”

Or that. That was probably better.

“More importantly,” The Doctor interjected, “is where those other dragons came from.”

Gigi froze. “And the ghosts. What the hell happened out there? It was like we stepped into a fantasy movie.”

“Well,” I licked my lips, glancing at Ryddyck and waving him over, “it seems, according to my new friend here, that the creation of the Dreg Army has been wearing a bit of a hole in our universe.”

“What?” Dray stood up, looming over Ryddyck even though he was only about two inches taller than the former prisoner of the House of Axl.

Ryddyck didn’t seem to notice the head of the House of Wren or his intimidating size. “The fighting was too much. Too much negative energy. Plus the heavy concentration of magic in the same space and time as this Dreg Army. The walls between this world and mine began to collapse. The Grista are from my world. It’s not uncommon for our worlds to intersect from time to time, but this is different. Permanent. If the fabric tears, our worlds will collide.”

“And who the hell are you, exactly?”

But Ryddyck didn’t look at Dray. He stared at Gigi. “I’m Ryddyck. And I’m here for her.”

Gigi blushed from head to toe. “Speaking of shared dreams…I’ve been dreaming of him for a long time now. Almost every night.”

“And I dream of you. You are the key to this.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Dray waved his hands through the air. “What is this?”

Ryddyck’s gaze never faltered. “To stopping this. It’s begun. As it has before. Once started it cannot stop.”

Dray looked to me. “Is that supposed to make sense?”

I shrugged, feeling a little sympathetic. Dray didn’t like mysteries. He liked clear, cold facts. Something he was never going to get with Ryddyck. “I’ve found if you let him talk long enough it starts to make some sense. Did you hear the part about shared dreams?”

“Well I don’t know if we’re sharing them or just dreaming about each other…” Gigi started babbling and wandering.

“We’re sharing them,” Ryddyck said with a simple nod.

Gigi blanched all over again.

“Can we get back to the key and stopping this stuff?” Dray boomed, turning red. Then he swayed a little and it took both the Doc and I to get him settled back down.

“My love. We don’t have answers and you need to let your body heal. The answers will come. All that matters is we have a truce with the Dreg Army and right now everyone we love is alive.”

“You’re right,” Dray grumbled. “I don’t like it. But you’re right.” Then he cupped my face and kissed me until I couldn’t breathe.