Lord of Rain (The Dragon Demigods #5) - Charlene Hartnady Page 0,104

is tight. “I was…I was so afraid of your reaction. I was afraid of losing you. Ash,” he takes my hand, “you’ve come to mean so much to me. You’ve become my whole—”

I pull my hand away. I don’t want to hear him say this. I need to know everything first. “You can start talking right now.” I push my hands into my armpits and hold myself.

“We should go and sit down first. Can I get you a blanket?”

I shake my head.

“We’re going to do this here…in the hallway?”

I nod. “It’s as good a place as any.”

He pushes out a breath. “Okay then, I’m a dragon demigod.”

I frown. “Demigod?”

Bolt nods. “My mom is a dragon shifter, and my father is a god.”

“A god?” I know I’m repeating everything, but… Shit! Come on!

“I’ve never met the guy, but my dad is Zeus. The Zeus.” He holds his hands up and, I swear they start to glow and crackle. “I need to be careful. I don’t want to hurt you, Ash.” The glowing goes away. “I’m not in complete control of my emotions right now, hence the storm outside. I can make lightning bolts, and I have influence over the weather. I can normally control it better, but…” he looks up, “I’m all over the place right now.”

A thought occurs to me. “The flash of light last night…” I say more to myself.

“I struck that cyclops fucker with a lightning bolt to get him off me so that I could shift into my dragon form. I needed a few seconds.” He sighs. “I know that humans can’t always get their heads around…us. Not that we’ve told many people. The dragon shifters have never fully accepted us. We’re…lost.” I feel sad for him but quickly push the emotion aside. Bolt is the last person who needs my pity. “I feel like I found myself when I met you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Ash—”

“Me…really? If that’s true, then you should have told me by now. If you care for me so much – if I ‘complete you’, and all that crap – you should have respected me enough to tell me who you are. And about the harpy. Your friends wouldn’t say much, which spoke volumes.”

His throat works. “I was going to tell you about her as well. I would have started with not being human, and then…I would have told you about…her.”

I feel my whole body tighten. “Tell me now.”

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“What exactly is a harpy? We’ll start there.” Who’s doing the prompting now? Funny how the wheel turns. In this case it’s sad. So incredibly sad.

He clears his throat. “They aren’t human. As far as I know they’re always women, but I could be wrong on that note. There isn’t much known about them.”

Again, he stops talking and chews the inside of his cheek and again I prompt him, “Tell me what you do know.”

“They’re beautiful and cunning. They’re vile and evil. They live on power…like leeches or parasites.” He looks angry. His eyes darken. “I had the misfortune of running into one.”

He tells me about his friend Lyre, who’s also a dragon demigod. He tells me how Lyre lost his power to a harpy. He tells me about his girlfriend, Morgan, and how they ended up at Lyre’s house with Bolt as bait. “They aren’t strong, like many of the other non-humans. They initially use their beauty and their charm, and then they use…they use their poison.” His eyes have this haunted look.

It hurts me to see him like this. I push some more. I have to know it all. Everything. “Poison…like a toad? How did she administer this poison?”

His mouth twitches, and then his eyes flare with sorrow. “No, she had this…thorn on the tip of her finger.”

“Venom, not poison,” I practically whisper. “Herpetology basics…” I mutter. “I like snakes, I think they’re misunderstood.” His eyes soften. I swear I can see the love in them. A whole lot of love and it’s directed at me. Pity it’s a lie! “Go on.” My voice is hard and flat.

Bolt nods once. “She took my hand. I had to let her do it. She had a gun to Morgan’s head. Then she injected me with the thorn and started pumping this shit into me. It usually wears off pretty quickly. A couple of hours, several days. That didn’t happen with me.”

“What does the venom do?”

“It fucks with your head. It made me think…” He looks up and stretches his neck. I can see