Lightning flashed a white glare across the red skies, but the clouds blurred, and a dark mass above grew smaller. Yet, I couldn't bring it into focus. Why was that mass so important? Instinct shrieked at me, screaming my need to get there. Why? Why was everything a blur? Flesh and bone crunched and parted between my teeth as I locked my jaw tighter, the mass beneath me bucking and writhing. Air howled around us, and I knew we were falling.
Still, my gaze was drawn upward. A knowing I couldn't fight. Deep within me, my seidhr roiled and churned, tightening and heating to searing intensity. Like gravity drawing all light into a black hole, it compressed ever hotter, building the pressure higher and part of my mind wondered at the significance. I couldn't remember it ever reacting like that within me, not in all my long eons of life. But my thoughts were fleeting, again pulled upward, a desperate yearning for something... someone...
Anna!
Like her name was a talisman, a key to unlock the supernova within me, a blast of black smoke exploded out from my centre, through every cell of my body. Everything sharpened instantly. The scent of putrid dragon, blood, and volcanic ash seared my nose. My eyes focused on Dragon's Breath, the sky island above us, and my wings spread, smoke spreading as the surrounding air responded to my call, halting our descent.
And the dead body of Lamashtu pierced with my talons and teeth.
I'd almost severed her neck in two. I released my jaws and spat, then finished removing her head with a swipe of claws. She would not be regenerating. Apkallu dragons could regrow body parts, but there was no way I'd allow her to come back from this. With a curl of my lip, I flung her body from me and used the air like knife blades, rending her body into a tiny blood rain to fall on the desolate land below.
The vile bitch had poisoned me, using a toxin to attempt to defeat me when she knew she couldn't win in honourable combat. How could my father have wanted her kept alive? Asag was going to mate with that? I shook my head, rocketing upward with my wings and power. Better to remove her filth and keep her from adding her perversion to our gene pool.
As much as I attempted to reassure myself, the weight of potential repercussions lay heavy on me. But I couldn't worry about it now. Not when Anna needed me. Already it had taken me too long to deal with Lamashtu. Had Mist and Manannan been successful in getting Anna out? I had to believe she was still alive. The blood on Lamashtu hadn't been Anna's, that much I was certain of when I'd finally scented it.
Volcanic ash covered the surface of the sky island as I rounded the rocky underside, plumes of fine grey particles swirling in the air as I flew past. The central mountain range with her underground palace came into view and I angled toward the black yawning maw. Her mutant demons, a bastardization of the Lahmu, the massive furred humanoids that had given rise to their own myths on Earth, and the winged gargoyles flew up to challenge me. It was easy to see why Manannan had named them some kind of gorilla-type demon. With a flick of seidhr, I sliced three apart and bit the fourth in half, letting the rest of the body fall where it would.
As I dove into the darkness of the entrance tunnel, more rose to attack and I slashed them with my talons as I roared my displeasure. With a wave of black seidhr clearing the way in front of me, I dispatched the rest and burst out to hover in the air of Lamashtu's throne room.
Taking in the scene with Manannan circled by hundreds of demons and another few demons off in a second cluster near a wall to my right, I guessed Mist's location. Immediately, I swept out with a wave of power, cutting down demons by the dozens. Shifting their focus, they surged towards me to attack.
"Anna?" I asked, my chest tightening as I waited for an answer.
"Here, with Mist against the wall," she said.
Her voice had never sounded so perfect, like a chime lighting my soul with music. Relief had me sweeping my tail, crushing demons with the blow as I moved to protect them. The foolish demons continued to throw themselves at me, dying in piles around me and the chamber grew sticky with the rivers of blood flowing from the dead. Still, they didn't stop. Perhaps they were unable to. It wouldn't surprise me if Lamashtu had programmed them with no survival instincts and instilled the need to protect her lair at all costs. She'd been ruthless enough.
Manannan cut down the last and in deafening silence after the noisy battle, we looked around. Not a single demon moved or groaned. Not a growl or flutter of a wing. Just a sea of body parts in a red ruin. Blood dripped from Manannan, coating his skin and hair. Not that I was much better, but it failed to cling to my dragonscale, sliding off to join the pools of sticky fluids.
A tentative touch to my hindleg had me shifting forms and spinning to find Anna in the only space clear from gore in the massive cavern. "Thank Tiamat. I was so worried, Anna. Are you okay?" With a few quick strides, I caught her in my arms and squeezed her to me.
She gave a pained gasp and I drew back, holding her shoulders and taking in her bandaged arm cradled to her chest. Her olive skin was pale in the torchlight, lines of pain creasing her forehead and eyes.
"My arm is broken, although it doesn't feel as bad as it did at first." Her gaze darted up to mine then away again as she continued, "The rest is just bumps and bruises. Thank you for rescuing me."
Something about her tone and unwillingness to meet my eyes sounded an alarm within me. I caught her chin in my fingers and brought her face up, waiting until she met my gaze. "Of course I'd come, Anna. You are mine. My mate. Why would you think I wouldn't come?"
Her eyes slid to the side and my chest tightened. This wasn't my imagination. She'd lost faith in me. Why? Because Lamashtu had captured her? But... wait... Manannan had said it seemed she'd been outside the palace barrier.
"Why did you go outside the palace barrier, Anna? I'd been clear that it wasn't safe, correct?"
She nodded but didn't speak.
"Anna." My voice deepened and I held a hand to ward off Mist when she stepped closer. "Answer me. Why did you go outside the palace barrier? Why did you put yourself at risk?"
Her eyes welled, turning glassy with tears that streaked through the dirt coating her skin, and my heart clenched. "Anna, please little one. Why?"
"I didn't mean to," she whispered. "I just needed to get away. You didn't want me. You just wanted a replacement for Inanna."
I closed my eyes. She'd overheard Mist and I speaking. I'd damned myself by not talking to her sooner. Part of me wanted to curse, to rage that she'd put herself in danger instead of simply asking me, yet she'd known I'd misled her before. She'd forgiven the deception of our meeting and I'd kept the harsh truth about her parents from her. As I continued to. No way was I going to tell her that.
But this... my hopes for our future, for children. That I should have talked more with her. Even knowing how violent she found our justice, I still should have made sure she understood.
"Anna, you are my mate. My bite bound us together and you accepted that. Was Inanna my mate as well? Yes, yes she was. And in the thousands of years since, I've not found another who would both be compatible and accept me." I gestured to Mist. "She's compatible but doesn't want to be my mate. That is her choice. You chose me, Anna, just as I chose you." I held her gaze, waiting for her to recognize that truth, to acknowledge that she'd made choices to be with me. By the Abyss, it wasn't like I fucking kidnapped her, damn it.
Finally, she nodded and I released the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"And what about children, Pazuzu? Is it me you want or just that I can give you children?" she murmured, watching me from beneath her lashes.
I released her and stepped away, a hand swiping the hair back from my head, then turned back to her. "They aren't mutually exclusive, Anna. Do I want children? Yes, yes I absolutely do. My race is dwindling. We have so few compatible females." My fingers tugged at my scalp, frustration warring with my need to make her understand her importance to me.
I strode back to her, wrapping a hand in her hair as I kissed her in a demanding, possessive display. Plundering and stroking, then biting at those plump lips, I melded our mouths again and again until a whimper of desire left her. The wet heat of her lush mouth had me growling as our lips parted. "I want to be a father, Anna." I lifted the hair from her neck, looking down at the silver scar on her flesh. "And I can't give the mating bite to a female who isn't capable of carrying my child. It's a biological compatibility. The bite won't take and the mating won't finalize."
She gazed up at me, lips reddened from our passion and a small smile curling at the edges. "Then I guess you'll be pleased that I'm pregnant."