out a sigh. Pandora, again. Part of me had ridiculously hoped she had gotten bored and meandered off. Last we saw her, we had been out on Mount Bracken, rescuing Raven from her clutches. The goddess, a wayward daughter of Zeus, had chosen to throw her lot in with Typhon. She had proven a sadistic and ruthless servant for the Father of Dragons.
“Do you have any idea where Pandora escaped to? She’s not on the mountain anymore,” Herne asked.
“She’s not? You checked?” I asked, swiveling to look at him.
“Yes, I checked for my father and mother. Pandora packed up and got her ass out of there after we found her.” Herne frowned.
“Pandora has moved into the Seattle area, so she’s hiding out somewhere. We aren’t sure where. She’s very good at keeping out of sight.” Ashera sighed. “She’ll rear her head again soon enough.”
“The murders she was committing seem to have stopped,” Talia said. “At least, we aren’t getting any more reports. That doesn’t mean she’s no longer targeting necromancers.”
Ashera gracefully crossed one knee over the other. “My thoughts are that they’ve moved onto bigger plans. But think about this: They could be flushing out those who work with the dead. Who else would you call to combat an army of ghosts and vrykos and zombies?”
A light went off over my head. “Bone witches, necromancers…mediums.”
“Right. And when you engage them to help you, it makes it easier for Aso and Variance to pinpoint those you’ve called on. They can then target them at leisure, while disrupting the town with the creatures that Gyell’s set free. Two birds. One stone.” Ashera shrugged.
A knot in my throat made it hard to speak. We had called in Raven to help, and she had already been under Pandora’s thumb once. Would they be targeting her a second time? Add to that, Pandora knew where Raven lived, so it wouldn’t be hard to find her.
“We have to warn Raven,” I said.
Herne gazed at Ashera, a contemplative look on his face. “I have another question and maybe you can answer it.”
“I’ll be happy to help, if I can.”
“What’s Typhon’s end game? That’s one thing none of us can figure out. It can’t just be domination or he would have sent the Luminous Warriors in force, to drive the world into submission already.” Herne shook his head. “The gods have discussed this ad nauseum and we can’t seem to come to a consensus.”
Ashera smiled, then, and a cold light filled her eyes that made me shiver. “We captured one of the shadow dragons who’s high up in the ranks of the Luminous Warriors. After we found out what we wanted to know, we stripped his memory and sent him back. The other side will find him, and he won’t be able to tell them anything. By the marks on his body, they will assume he had an accident that left him wounded in both body and mind.”
The room seemed to darken. The strength behind her words made me feel very much like a dust speck next to her. It was as though her true nature—her dragon self—filled every inch of the building and beyond. And at that moment I realized that, one of the Celestial Wanderers or not, Ashera was far more than deadly.
“What did you find out?” Yutani asked, and even he seemed subdued.
“Typhon isn’t out to kill the mortals of this planet, but to enslave them under his rule. Even in stasis, while he slumbered, images and information from the outer worlds crept in, and he watched as civilization evolved. There’s much that could benefit the Dragonni, including melding magic with technology. And with so many people…let’s just say the food supply is far more likely to support a larger dragon population.” She shifted uncomfortably.
I took a breath, not quite understanding what she was saying.
But by the look on his face, Herne did. “Then it’s worse than we feared.” He pulled out his phone. “I need to text this information to my father and mother, so they can pass it on.”
“What are you talking about?” Angel said. “What’s this mean? My stomach feels like I swallowed a rock, and my psychic alarms are screaming.”
Rafé looked worried, leaning over to stroke her arm. She gave him a wan smile as Viktor cleared his throat and turned to her.
“If I am hearing right, Typhon intends the mortal population—I assume humans, Fae, and Cryptos all inclusive—to become the food supply for a large and robust dragon community.”