Elliot, page 17
part #3 of Anarock Shifters Series
Amaya took a step toward Elliot. He felt that step from the eons of time. His world tilted on its axis. She arrived at his elbow like a message from another world. She touched his arm. “Come with us.”
She steered him around. He never thought to argue or resist. From somewhere out of the distance, she guided him down the street. He lost awareness of where he was and where he was going until they entered a building. He found himself walking down a hall.
The trio entered a bar full of people. Elliot didn’t recognize it. He thought he knew everything and everyone in Anarock, but apparently, these two girls knew things he didn’t.
Amaya escorted him to a bar stool and they sat down at his right. They faced him together. “You have a plan, don’t you, Elliot?” Amaya began. “You have a plan for how to get Aria back. Tell us what it is.”
He opened his mouth. He really didn’t have any plan worked out. He never thought twice about any plan. He got so distracted by getting back to the Halcyon Coast. He forgot to think about what he would do when he got there.
The two girls regarded him waiting. He glanced behind the bar, but the bartender was nowhere in sight. Elliot’s mind went into a tailspin.
“Tell us again how you got down there,” Gianna prompted. “How did she fall through?”
Elliot shrugged. What did he really have to lose confiding in these two? They were Aria’s sisters. If anyone in Anarock would help him, they would. “They used some kind of magical portals. I don’t understand them, but apparently, a few people around here know how to use them. The Blood Kin—that’s this other race of dragon shifters—they used their portals to spy on Anarock. They showed me Luna Kehoe using one to spy on the Omega Battalion.”
Amaya snorted. “Everyone’s spying on everybody else.”
“Everybody but Victor,” Elliot grumbled. “I don’t think he’s spying on anybody, but everyone’s spying on him.”
“So they used these portals to take you and Aria under the water,” Gianna went on. “Is that how you got back up here?”
Elliot nodded. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have left her down there alone. I understand that now.”
The sisters looked at each other again. “If they have a way to do it, we should be able to find a way to do it.”
“NightRage knows how to do it,” Elliot told them. “They said they’ve been back and forth more than once.”
“Sure,” Amaya replied. “Exos is their man.”
Elliot whipped around fast. “Exos!”
Amaya nodded. “He’s a safe breaker. He uses his portals to get inside bank safes. He rips them off and takes his stuff back through the portal to NightRage. Where do you think they get their money?”
Elliot stared straight ahead at nothing. “I didn’t know they had any money. I thought they were just as poor as us.”
Amaya chuckled to herself. The sound sent a shiver up Elliot’s spine. “They’re the richest Crest in Anarock. They’ve got more money than they know what to do with, thanks to Exos.”
“How do you two know so much about it?” Elliot swept his hand around. “How do you know about this place?”
Gianna made a face. “It ain’t rocket science, boy.”
Amaya cut in. “So we need Exos. That’s all there is to it. We need to make him send us through one of these portals to the Halcyon Coast.”
“Not just there,” Gianna countered. “We can’t just show up there. We need a way to bring Aria back.”
Elliot looked back and forth between these two. He could hardly believe he was hearing this after so many rejections from every quarter. “What are you going to do? If you go down the Halcyon Coast, you better be ready to fight your way out against huge dragons. They won’t let Aria go without a battle. They don’t want anybody coming down there and then leaving. They don’t want anybody knowing where they are or even that they exist.”
Amaya guffawed in his face. “Well, that’s all shot to hell, isn’t it? According to you, NightRage knows all about them. Maybe all that shit about no one finding out they exist is just their way of controlling people. For all we know, they’ve been in an alliance with NightRage all along.”
Elliot blinked at her. Aria’s words about Victor came rushing back and a sickening heaviness settled in his guts. He had no fucking idea what any of these people were doing in Anarock. He didn’t even know what his own father was doing in the Prometheus Crest and they were the most transparent house in this city.
Anybody could be in alliance with anyone else and he would never know it. No one would ever know. The Prometheus Crest or the NightRage Crest or any other house Crest of Anarock could do whatever they fucking pleased. They could tell the common people any lie and no one would know a thing about it.
Elliot never tried to understand it before. He deluded himself into thinking he was above all that political bullshit. Now he found out he was nothing but a pawn. He wasn’t even a pawn. He wasn’t even on the fucking chessboard. He was collateral. He was cannon fodder. He was trash.
He slumped on his stool gazing at these two powerful women. They would help him get Aria back, but they scared the shit out of him. Did he dare associate with them? They would take him somewhere he’d never gone before. Could he really handle that?
A shade of Aria’s voice whispered in his ear. He needed her in his veins. These two crazy bitches were the only ones who could help him. “So what do you want to do?”
Gianna straightened up. “We need to get hold of Exos.”
“How do we do that?” Elliot asked.
Amaya cracked a grin that made Elliot shudder. She raised both hands and grabbed her own breasts. She gripped them. “With these.”
“You sick whore!” Gianna chided. “I don’t think that fucker even has a dick to suck.”
Amaya dropped her hands and curled her lip. “I wouldn’t suck him even if he offered to hand-deliver Aria to my doorstep. This is just the bait. After that, it’s strictly cash on delivery.”
Elliot gasped. “Are you sure?”
Both sisters rounded on him. Their dark eyes made him quake when they stared at him like that. It was Gianna who spoke, but the voice sounded like it came from both of them, from their combined soul somewhere out in space. “We can get Exos, but we need you to break Aria out. We can’t do it without you, Elliot. We need a dragon to fight dragons. Are you with us?”
He found himself nodding against his deepest inclinations to bolt and run for the hills. “I’m in until the end. If we get Exos to take us there, I won’t quit until I bring her home. You have my word on that.”
“All right.” Amaya took a sip of her drink. Elliot couldn’t remember her ordering it. “I know where to find him. He shouldn’t be too hard to bundle up.”
Elliot swallowed hard. “What are you gonna do?”
“We’re gonna catch him and take him to a place we know. We’ll offer to pay him to get Aria back. That fucker don’t understand nothing but cold, hard dollar bills.”
Elliot hesitated to ask too many questions. “What do you want me to do?”
“We’ll show you.” Amaya got to her feet. “Let’s roll.”
The trio left the bar. Elliot’s guts twisted in knots when they led him back to South Claiborne Avenue. He didn’t want to cross it again, but before they put their little toes off the sidewalk, they halted.
The two sisters put their heads together. Amaya muttered under her breath. “Any second now….”
“Do you have the syringe?” Gianna asked.
Instead of answering, Amaya’s head whipped up. “Here he comes.”
“How do you know?” Elliot asked.
Amaya didn’t reply. She set off running across the street, but when Elliot started forward to accompany her, Gianna caught his arm. “Hold up, brother.”
“What the fuck are you two doing?” he hissed. “Is Exos over there?”
Gianna trained her gaze across the street and laid her forefinger to her lips. Elliot shivered, but before he could react, Amaya reappeared. She strolled down the sidewalk side by side with the dwarf from the basement.
Amaya drew up under a streetlamp. She talked down to Exos and he grinned up at her. Elliot couldn’t make out the words from here, but the scene strained his nerves to the breaking point. What were the sisters going to do?
Gianna tugged his sleeve. She steered him several paces farther down the street and towed him over to the Hoffman side. They emerged in a shadowed place behind Exos. When Gianna swiveled around and started approaching him from the dark, Elliot began to see the plan unfolding before his eyes.
Gianna softened her footsteps until she got about fifty yards behind Exos. Amaya laughed out loud and sidled a few steps closer to the dwarf. She slipped her delicate hand behind his neck and the streetlamp glowed on her olive-brown skin and her jet-black hair.
Gianna changed her stride. Her heel struck the concrete sidewalk and made a loud, clear ringing noise. Exos whipped around. He glanced at her and Elliot striding closer every second. Amaya darted in at that moment and whispered something in Exos’s ear. He veered around and put his stumpy arms around her waist. One chubby hand glided down to her ass.
Gianna picked up the pace. Her footsteps drummed loud and clanging against the walls. Amaya’s lips parted. She leaned her head back and her eyelids drifted half-closed. Elliot was close enough now to hear her moan in Exos’s ear.
Gianna tensed and a jolt of electricity shot through Elliot’s being. He was on his way into a fight for his life. He was never more certain of anything. Gianna stuck her hand in her pocket and drew out a collapsible baton. She flicked her wrist and extended it. Her knuckles whitened around the handle.
Elliot braced himself to shift when Amaya let out a particularly erotic groan of pure sexual ecstasy into Exos’s ear. Gianna reared back and wound up her baton to smash his skull to a pulp. At the same instant, Amaya whipped out a syringe and stabbed it into Exos’s neck.
Elliot’s blood boiled in his veins, but Amaya gritted her teeth in a vicious grimace and crammed down the plunger. Exos emitted a piercing scream and crumpled at her feet. Gianna lunged for him. The next second, her arm flopped to her side and she grunted. “Shit, girl! Did you have to drag it out so long?”
Amaya raised her piercing eyes to her sister’s face. Her lips twisted in a brutish grin of animal insanity. “You took long enough yourself. I thought you would never get across the street. I thought I was gonna have to fuck him right here.”
Gianna stuffed her baton down to pocket-sized and bent over their victim. “Come on. Let’s get him over to Central before someone sees us.”
She seized Exos by a wrist and started to haul him up, but Elliot jumped forward. “I’ll take him.”
Gianna made a face. “Sir Lancelot to the rescue.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Elliot took Exos’s hand out of her grasp and slung the dwarf over his shoulder. The little wizard weighed next to nothing. “Where do you want to take him?”
Amaya straightened her clothes. “Follow us.”
18
Elliot laid Exos on a couch in the Slaughter family basement. He regarded the little wizard with his head on one side. “Now what? How long do we have to wait for him to come around?”
“About ten seconds.” Amaya knelt on the cushion and jabbed another syringe into Exos’s neck.
“Jesus, girl!” Elliot breathed. “How many of those cocktails do you have?”
She uttered a sickening, sadistic chuckle. “Thousands.”
Exos interrupted her by lunging off the couch sucking in air. His eyes stared all around him and he shot upright as fast as he collapsed. He whipped one way and then the other staring at his captors.
Gianna bent over him and pushed him down. “Keep your shorts on, sucker. You’re not in any danger here.”
Exos pulled his head in and bared his teeth at Amaya. “I should have known you would play me, you fucking bitch whore.”
“You’re right.” Amaya stood up and tossed her syringe away. “You should have.”
He shrank into the cushion trying to watch everyone at once. “What the fuck do you want? I don’t have any money.”
“We don’t want your money, Exos,” Gianna murmured. “It might surprise you to know we brought you here to offer you money, not the other way around.”
He cracked a grin. “If you want to give me money, you didn’t have to kidnap me. You could just walk up to me in broad daylight and give it to me.”
“We need you to do something for us. We need you to open a portal for us. We’ll pay, but you have to keep it open until we come back through. It’s that simple.”
His lips quivered back from his teeth. “If there’s any danger involved, you can shove your money up your ass. I don’t do danger.”
“There won’t be any danger to you, shithead,” Amaya chimed in. “You can stand back picking your ass for all we care, but you won’t get paid until we come back in one piece with our sister.”
“Your sister!” Exos snorted. “What the fuck would I want to have anything to do with another one of you bitches? Just the two of you are too many.”
“Maybe, but if you want the money, you have to open the portal and keep it open for us. That’s the deal?”
His eyes darted the other way. “How much are we talking about?”
Gianna drew herself up. “Fifty thousand cash.”
Elliot gasped out loud, but he stopped himself from saying anything. These two turned out to be so much more deadly than he ever imagined. He half-regretted getting involved with them. Now he understood where Aria got her nerve.
Exos glanced at his reaction. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t have that kind of money lying around?”
“We don’t have it lying around, you stinking piece of shit,” Amaya snarled. “We wouldn’t leave it lying around for a conniving thief like you to steal. If you want the job, say so now because we don’t have time to fuck around. Give us a yes or no and you can go your own way.”
He scrutinized the three of them. “Fine. Where do you want to go?”
Amaya migrated to her sister’s side. “We’re going to the Halcyon Coast.”
He crouched in on himself and looked away. “I never heard of it.”
Elliot found his voice to speak up. “Of course you do. You said yourself NightRage has been there before. You know where it is.”
“Even if you didn’t,” Gianna added, “you don’t need to know where it is to open a portal to it. If you’re gonna do it, just do it and keep your filthy mouth shut.”
Exos narrowed his eyes at Elliot. “There’s a price to pay for this, you know.”
“We just said we’d pay for…..” Amaya began.
Exos chopped his hand through the air. “Not money. There’s always another price to pay. Are you willing to pay that?”
“What other price?” Gianna’s voice bit.
Exos ignored her. He trained all his attention on Elliot. “Are you willing to pay that? Are you?”
Elliot’s skin crawled. He opened his mouth to say something, but Amaya interrupted. “How can we know if we’ll pay it when we don’t know what you’re asking for?”
Exos’s lips twisted back. He kept his glinting little eyes fixed on Elliot. “Well? I won’t open the portal without my price. Are you willing to pay that?”
The girls turned around to look at him. Elliot couldn’t look away. Was Exos casting a spell on him right now? Either way, he knew the answer he had to give. He gulped. “I’ll pay any price. If it means getting Aria back, I’ll do anything.”
“Fine. Just don’t take all night. I have a real whore waiting for me in Hoffman.” Exos scooted off the couch. “Here.”
He waved his hand back and forth in front of the sisters. A glistening window of white light materialized in mid-air. It undulated and glowed in ripples of brilliance.
Exos flipped his fingers toward it. “Well? Go on if you’re going. Just hurry the fuck up.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Amaya took hold of his shirt. “You’re coming with us.”
He struggled against her towing him forward. “Hey! I never agreed to this.”
“You must think we’re really stupid,” Gianna told him. “You would send us through and leave us there. You’re coming with us. Then maybe you’ll make sure we come back the way we planned.”
He dragged his feet, but Amaya left him no choice. She marched him to the portal and the sisters pushed him through it. They ducked into the aperture and Elliot shuddered. This was it. He was going back to the Halcyon Coast, but at least he was going where Aria was. If this worked, he would bring her back to Anarock and he never had to go back to that hellhole again. He took a deep breath and stepped through.
The first thing he saw was a black bear flat on her stomach in the middle of the vast Halcyon plane. A dozen dragons swarmed all over her. They darted their long necks to slash every inch of her. One of them clamped his jaws around the back of her neck and blood flowed between his fangs.
Elliot rocketed forward bellowing in rage. He shifted on the fly, but Gianna and Amaya got to Aria first. They shifted in mid-stride and changed into identical bears slathering their teeth and roaring. They charged the last few yards to their sister’s side and dove into the fight.
The dragons wheeled to confront the new threat, but half of them continued to pin Aria to the ground. They lashed their tails at the bears rushing them. Four of them streaked at the sisters screaming bloody murder.
Elliot shot through the water. It slowed him down, but bottomless fury against these creatures gave him monstrous strength. He caught a dragon by the neck and snapped its spine. He didn’t take the time to figure out who was who. They were dragons. He didn’t need to know anything beyond that.
Dragons buried Gianna and Amaya under mountains of reptilian flesh. Their scales flashed and they beat their wings. The sisters’ thunderous bellows echoed far and wide. They ripped the dragons apart one limb at a time.
Another three dragons came at Elliot whistled through the eerie water. They strapped their coils around him, but nothing could stop him now that he could see Aria right in front of him. He came all this way. He wouldn’t go back without her.
