Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,174
purple and blue lightning whipped out from her palm, slamming full force into Randall Price’s chest. The blast was so loud, Sterling’s eardrums shut tight to protect themselves. A ringing started up to fill the silence.
Price must have cried out in surprise and pain, but all traces of any noise he might have made were swallowed up by Annaleia’s cacophony as her stalker was picked up and thrown backward with hurricane force. He moved so fast he blurred, slamming into what was left of the wall behind him before he broke right through it to fly into the darkness beyond.
Chapter Fifty-nine – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Annaleia turned away from the hole Randall Price’s body had left and faced her friends. “Are you all okay?” she asked, suddenly feeling exhausted. The lightning cascading over her skin dissipated almost at once. Her vision switched out from a highly contrasted dragon’s sight to the human vision she was accustomed to. And the storm overhead broke up and stopped spinning. Immediately, objects that had been previously airborne were dropped, fortunately not on anyone she cared about.
She looked from Carmen to Piper, both of whom were obviously shell shocked, and finally to Sterling. Jarrod met her eyes, held her gaze, and nodded, his smile genuinely kind but a little sad.
She understood.
“Anna-freaking-leia, you’re a mother-freaking storm dragon!” Piper suddenly cried out just before she broke into a run. She and Carmen reached Anna at the same time, both girls tackling her with fierce hugs and manic talking that was nearly too fast for anyone to comprehend. “I mean, did I say that right? Is that what you are? Storm dragons are a thing, right?”
Anna found herself laughing one of those deep, genuinely happy belly laughs that only the truly grateful can feel. Her response was to simply hug them back harder.
The sound of a gun being fired into the night broke up the reunion. Anna separated from them and spun around. It was difficult to determine from which direction the gunshot had come. The sound ricocheted in echo just as much as the gun’s bullets sometimes did.
But it was fired three more times in quick succession, and Anna and Sterling wound up standing side-by-side at the brink of the building’s destroyed wall, right in the middle of the hole Price’s body had left moments earlier.
Anna stared down at the unfolding scene below. A dozen men in black leather jackets faced off with men Anna didn’t recognize but who were very obviously not human. Their eyes glowed a number of different eerie colors, and they were strong enough and fast enough to challenge the Monsters clan without being instantly defeated. Anna was guessing they were Dires or Apexes, perhaps both, though that was rare.
There were a few other wardens below as well, some she recognized such as Conall Tiarnahn. The warden world had answered the call for help with record speed, and good thing too – given the fresh wave of dangerous creatures moving in from the shadow line around the abandoned building. All manner of beasts began to emerge. She could make out a bookah, a real, live fuatharkan, and a cantorip, to name a few.
The clan wardens could have handled them all. This was what they trained for.
However, everyone had stopped fighting, the sound of shots fired bringing them to a sober halt. Anna recognized that this was because the wardens realized a gun would be useless in the fray against Victor Maze. The chaos he emitted would twist barrels, knock aims off center, and send bullets into the wrong recipients. Hand-to-hand combat was the safest bet, so no one was using guns. Hence, the sound of one going off was unexpected.
Anna followed the line of their sight as they all stopped and turned to face someone else. At their front and center, she found Antares. Across from him was the tall man in a white suit. The suit was torn in several places and stained with blood. Anna smiled with the knowledge that her love had managed to harm the god somehow, but her smile slipped away when she then followed Ares’ line of sight.
To where Randall Price stood in the middle of the street twenty yards down, his arm wrestle-wrapped around a woman’s throat as if he were going to choke her off, his other hand pressing the barrel of a gun to her temple. The front of his own clothing bore a massive hole, right over his chest. That was where Anna had struck