LIANNDRA

They had only gone a short distance before he felt something terrible stirring in the back of his mind. There was something he had to do. Something that called him. "What’s the matter? Why are you slowing down?" Chelsea asked. Lianndra shook his head, trying to clear his brain, knowing that it was no use. The Call was too strong. There was no way to resist it and there was no real reason to either. "It’s the Dragon. He’s Challenging me and there’s no way to overcome a Calling of such proportions," he said. "What are you talking about?" He had forgotten how innocent she was of the secrets of vampire society. She had spent her entire life as "Chelsea," skulking in shadows, hiding from herself as much as from the rest of vampire kind. "When a vampire lord is Challenged, they must reply," Lianndra said. "They are compelled and there’s no way to resist the Call. I have to face him even if I don’t want to, and frankly I’m not sure that I don’t. There’s something inside of me that wants to find out who’s better once and for all: the Dragon or me." "But that’s suicide!" she practically shouted. "Yes, isn’t it, though?"

DEZI

Strange feelings filled the night. Things were happening that she couldn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, but she knew that it was going to involve her. She felt it so deep inside that there was no way to dispel it. Chris hovered beside her, a bundle of nerves. Dezi didn’t want to scare him, but she knew that they were heading directly into trouble and that something very bad was going to happen. That was when it reached her: an echo of the Call. "What was that?" Chris demanded, his skin prickling. She cursed out loud. "Someone’s Challenged Lianndra." "What’s that supposed to mean?" Dezi shrugged her shoulders. "It’s hard to explain, but someone has Challenged Lianndra to a fight to the death. There’s no way for him to say no. It has something to do with our natural vampire instincts. When we’re Challenged, we have to fight, even if we don’t really want to." "But that’s stupid!" She nodded. "Isn’t it, though?" His eyes burned into her, trying to see into her brain, but since she had no idea what she was going to do herself, she doubted that he was going to get much out of it. Finally, "What are we going to do?" he asked. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "We go there and we hope that we’re not too late." "Too late for what?" "You tell me," Dezi said. "You tell me."

LIANNDRA

He knew that Chelsea didn’t want him to fight, but there was no getting out of it. There were some things in life that you just had to do, no matter how much you didn’t want to or how terrible they were.

"Come on," he said, heading toward the spot where he knew the Dragon waited.

A shadowed bit of wood, the tall trees hiding everything from his eyes so he was forced to depend on his mind’s eye and his ability to See. The shadows were rather forbidding and he could sense that someone, or something, was waiting for him there, hidden in darkness.

They came to earth with a gentleness that few people would have been able to appreciate. There are few things more difficult for a vampire to learn how to do than to land after flying high above the world. Even a short period of time in the air left one with a feeling of godliness, as though they could reach out their hand and cup the ball of the Earth in their palm, crushing all of the life out of it at will. Landing though. It made one realize how small and insignificant they really were. That they are only one person in a sea of faces and that was all they would ever be, even if they someday became the ruler of the world. There would always be someone out there to break any record set, to change the lines that were drawn in the sand, to affect the way the entire world thought. And more than likely, it wouldn’t be you.

Lianndra shook off the strange sadness that always came when he touched down to earth and stalked forward toward the shadow beneath the trees. He tried to make his steps arrogant, to make himself appear confident of his own strengths and powers. Even if he lost, he expected all to know that he had made a good showing.

"Yanadula," he said, simply.

A moment of silence. "How do you know my name, little one?"

Lianndra smiled in his most infuriating way. "I know more than you might expect."

There, beat that, he thought fiercely. He was building a mystery that would haunt the man even if he lost. There are few things more likely to drive one crazy, than to think back on the words of your loser of an opponent and have to wonder what they meant when they said what they said. Now all he had to do was figure out something suitably enigmatic to say, so that even from the grave, the man would be haunted by his words.

"I expect that you’re prepared to fight," he said, stopping just outside of the shadows. He didn’t want to get too close too soon.

"As are you, dark child. Is it time for you to die, I wonder?"

The movement was so swift that Lianndra almost missed it. He barely stepped back in time to avoid the clawed hand that swiped right across where his head had been. If he hadn’t moved, those claws would have sliced across his eyes, blinding him.

"Very good," that dry voice was amused.

Already Lianndra knew that he was going to hate this man. A lot. "You missed," he taunted, stepping backward.

Straining his ears, he managed to hear the slight movement forward. The man didn’t want him to get too far away.

"I didn’t miss. I was testing you."

He nodded. "Okay." Then, "I thought you wanted to fight, not hide in the shadows. Are you afraid?"

A chilling laugh that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Iciness flowed through his blood. "We will fight when it is appropriate. Until then, I think that you will amuse me very much. For such a youngling, you are very fast with your words."

"I’m faster with my blade," Lianndra said, stepping backward.

A movement of shadowed hands that looked more like claws than anything else. There was almost nothing human to those hands. They belonged to some kind of alien creature. Definitely inhuman.

Cautiously, Lianndra sent out a tendril of thought to probe his enemy’s defenses. That mind was locked tight. All he got was a faint impression of immeasurable age and a kind of serpentine intelligence.

He stepped backward and felt, more than saw, the man move forward. "Why did you Challenge me?" he asked, keeping up his careful movement backward.

"Because I could." Another step forward. Closer now. Soon they would both be in the light and Lianndra had to wonder if that was what he really and truly wanted.

There was something about this man that he didn’t want to see. From the shape of the shadow, he was certain that the man wasn’t completely human in appearance. Other than those arms, he was fairly man-shaped, but there were some strange angles to him that didn’t belong on any human being.

Yanadula again made those strange, furtive movements with his hands. Squinting his eyes, Lianndra almost thought that he saw what those hands were doing, but it was impossible for him to see clearly.

"We don’t have to do this, you know. I handled the Queen already," Lianndra offered, holding his hands palm outward so the man could see he wasn’t armed.

The man laughed, a terrible, hissing kind of laugh. "What do you think you are, child? To Challenge me, then try to step away?"

"I didn’t Challenge you!"

"Yes you did, by your very existence."

With an incredibly fast, sweeping movement of one arm, Lianndra was thrown backward, the outer layer of his clothing torn to tatters by those razor claws. Only the Roalin material kept his skin intact, but the impact itself was painful.

"Well, at least this tree broke my fall," he said to himself under his breath, using the tree trunk to lever himself up to his feet.

"Little boy, why don’t you run away?" Yanadula asked in that taunting, sibilant whisper of his.

Lianndra would have laughed, but he had a sudden overwhelming feeling of fear. It was so strong that it rolled over his mind like a wave, drowning him in mindless terror. He whimpered and fell back down, his hands locking over his head as he huddled in upon himself.

"Poor little boy, poor, poor, little boy." Yanadula was closer now. "Do you want me to tuck you into bed, little boy, nice and safe under the covers?" Closer, so close that he could almost feel that fetid breath against his cheek. Could almost taste the old blood, the death.

"Leave me alone!" he screamed, unable to help himself.

Hissing laughter, fear crashing over him until he could barely think. A fragment of poetry popped into his head:

That summed up what he was feeling exactly. The pain and fear that filled his mind was such a torment that he almost prayed for death. Wanted so badly to have even just a second of relief. But he knew that even if he fell beneath the dragon’s claws, he had already won and no one could take that victory away from him. Not right here and now.

He thought about the dagger strapped to his thigh, thought about pressing it against his chest and slamming it home within his heart. To finally have an end to the fear, to have that terribly sweet stillness that only came with death.

It was when he thought that, that Lianndra realized what was happening. He was being manipulated.

Lianndra gritted his teeth and pressed back, sending his mind out as a bolt of pure energy. He focused most of his strength behind it, keeping only just enough energy behind to anchor himself to his body, to keep himself alive.

That bolt struck the Dragon’s shields and there was a moment of stillness, he could almost see the stunned surprise on the other’s face at that impact. Everything froze, then something shattered into a million pieces so small that they could never be put back together again.

Yanadula screamed in agony before stumbling backward.

Lianndra pressed the attack, sending bolts sizzling through that space where the broken shields had been, sent them straight into the other’s mind. He could feel the Dragon’s brain contracting beneath the onslaught, could feel his thoughts crumbling before they could even form. No thinking creature could take this kind of abuse for long. He would crack, or he would die, but either way, he would be defeated.

No one could have been as surprised as Lianndra was when the man suddenly fell to his knees, the outline of his body rippling, strange things pressing out of the surface of his skin. Lianndra’s eyes went wide in horror, but he couldn’t look away.

There was the tearing sound of cloth, then the sickening, ripe-watermelon splitting sound of skin ripping. The air was filled with the scent of blood and other bodily fluids, grunts and moans and harsh breathing.

Slowly, carefully, Lianndra backed away, keeping his eyes on the strange sight before him.

Yanadula was no longer man-shaped, no longer man-sized. He was about eight feet long now, growing rapidly, his skin ripping and tearing, falling away like ragged cloth.

Braving a look over his shoulder, Lianndra met the wide, violet eyes of Chelsea who stood out in the circle of light. She looked absurdly young standing there, like a child dragged out of bed late at night. Tispith’s ragged dress was well-favored by the weak light, making the yellow of the cloth almost invisible, like a nightgown.

"RUN!"

She met his eyes, then was gone, disappearing up into the night sky. He shook off whatever worry he had for her and turned back to face Yanadula.

It was shocking. There was no longer a man, but a giant lizard with four limbs, tiny, bud-like arrangements on its back and a long, narrow snout. It also happened to be about thirty-six feet long.

It hulked in the weak shadows, suddenly rearing up on its hind legs, its snout turning toward him, rage burning in those golden eyes. This was death personified.

~So, little one, you dare to strike at me? Very well, you shall be punished as you deserve.~ That terrible voice resounded in Lianndra’s mind, leaving a pounding agony in its wake.

He squared his shoulders and tried to stand as tall as possible, which wasn’t very. "You Challenged me first, I only reciprocated in kind."

Rumbling laughter, a hint of sulfur on the breeze. ~Silly child, you think that you could ever match me? I may have started it, but I will finish it as well.~

The creature lumbered forward, full into the light for the first time. Lianndra’s breath caught in awe. It was beautiful. The underbelly was white and smooth like an alligator’s. The scales on its back were emerald green, bright gold, reddish-brown and black. It had a small horn in the middle of its long snout, the horn sparkling in the light like diamonds. Its eyes were huge, pure gold with no pupils and no whites, just that gold. There was a gem imbedded in its forehead, a giant, blood red ruby. It took Lianndra a moment to recognize what that ruby looked like. "The BloodStone!" ~Very smart. You recognize what it is, don’t you? This is my heart, Lianndra; without it I am nothing, without it I would never be able to Change. It is all that I am and ever will be.~ "Is the BloodStone a dragon’s heart?" Lianndra asked. The creature laughed and he had to cover his ears, but that didn’t muffle the sound. The sound was inside his brain, swallowing him up. It grated along his nerves, eating its way through the bone and blood and tissue like acid, burning through his thoughts. He could feel his brain bubbling and melting. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" That painful laughter stopped, just cut off as though it were murdered. He didn’t know how he had done it, but he had called up the Command Voice. His throat hurt, but the pain was already fading away like a memory, the edges shadowing and disappearing.

His before life, from when he was a true human and lived on his own world with his real family, were hard memories to reach. There were so many things that he couldn’t remember, that were like dreams of things that never happened. Vaguely, he thought that he had heard the Command Voice before, that it was something normal on his world. That it was something the Lords and Ladies that ruled all used to keep the normal, unTalented people in line. It was the voice of truth, the impelling force that made people have to look at the darkness in their own hearts and tell it they weren’t afraid. It was a terrible power that could so easily be abused that no jokes were made about it. Now he found that he had the Voice inside of him. That he could send it whipping out into the hearts and minds of others and force them to conform to his will. It was frightening. It was wonderful. He felt a smile curve his lips. A smile that he didn’t even like the feel of, but that he couldn’t stop. "You will do as I Command, will you not?" his Voice rang in the stillness. The dragon lowered its head down to the ground, touching its chin to the grass. ~Command and I obey,~ that alien voice said, only there was another quality to it, one that hadn’t been there before. Lianndra looked into the creature’s eyes and saw the desperate struggle there. The way that Yanadula was madly trying to take back control of his will, was trying to order his body to kill Lianndra in the most painful way possible. ~there are some things that you can never do,~ Lianndra said. ~one of those things is fight me on my own ground.~ There were so many things he had forgotten, so many things he hadn’t wanted to remember. But now they were returning to him, flooding his mind with knowledge he had thought lost forever. When Lianndra had first come to this world, he had thought that it would be much like his own. He had figured that people here would have the same talents and gifts as the people on his world, which meant that he would have to hide even the secrets in his mind from view, lest they discover who and what he really was. And so he had blocked off whole sections of his memory in hopes of hiding his secrets from prying eyes. Instead, he had only crippled himself. The irony of it was the fact that he hadn’t needed to. The people on this world were mind-blind and as simple as children. It was ridiculously easy for him to confuse them with his godlike powers of the mind. He should have been angry, should have been raging against the fates that had made him do something so needlessly. Instead, he felt like smiling, laughing at the foolish boy he had been.

Now here he was, complete once again in his powers. There was something so satisfying about being able to send his mind out and control other people. Especially being able to control a being as powerful as Yanadula, the great and legendary Dragon.

~You will not be able to control me for long. Already I feel the bonds that you have tied about me loosening. Soon I will be free to destroy you, as is proper.~

Lianndra felt a grin stretch his lips; it didn’t feel like a very nice expression. "Come to me here and lower yourself to the ground," he ordered.

The dragon obeyed. His eyes whirled different colors of anguish, hate and rage.

Lianndra reached down and brought the dagger out of its thigh sheath and stepped forward. He knew that what he was about to do was cruel, but it had to be done.

"Hold still."

He held the dagger steady as he brought it around in a swirling arch, slicing the BloodStone, the dragon heart, free. It fell to the ground in a splatter of dark purple blood.

Yanadula roared in agony, his body shimmering around the area where his heart had been. In a moment, he would revert to his man-form.

Lianndra narrowed his eyes and stabbed out with the blade. Vaerdiceth Draco made a screaming sound, a terrible screaming of vindication as it ate its way through the dragon’s flesh, searching for the creature’s soul.

The dragon shuddered and twisted and shrieked, but there was no escaping Lianndra’s Command. He would die and there was nothing he could do, his soul sucked out of his body so that he didn’t even have the hope of an afterlife. There would be nothing for him.

It was impossible to tell how long they stood there, how long it took for a soul to be absolutely destroyed. The dagger quivered in the vampire boy’s hand with all of the dark delight of a living being finally getting its revenge.

Lianndra swallowed hard and swiped an arm across his forehead. Splatters of dark blood stained his shirt, marks of guilt. He had just destroyed a being so completely that it was beyond evil. He had ripped a living soul from a body, sucking it up and entrapping it so that it would never have the freedom to fly its course. He had known it was wrong, and he’d done it anyway.

"Are you all right?" a soft voice asked from low to the ground.

He turned with superhuman speed and peered into the darkness.

When he had been alive, Yanadula had somehow made the darkness and shadows thicker than they should have been. Now things had returned to normal, so Lianndra was able to see the worried face of Chelsea peeking out from behind a bush. She must have ignored his command to get as far away as possible and crept back.

He couldn’t manage to draw up the emotion he would need to be angry. He just kind of shrugged and let it slip away. Now was not a time to be petty, it was a time to be glad that he was alive and to worry that murder could ever be so easy.

Murder should have been harder, should have brought sweat to his skin. But there was also the fact that he was feeling a little numb just yet. He would be struck by the total and complete horror of the moment later, when his conscience kicked in and he hated himself for being so evil. Murder was not something that anyone should do, but he had done it so often that it was becoming a kind of terrible habit, one that left him hating himself, yet enjoying it as well.

"I’ve killed him, you can come out now," he said, his voice strangely calm. He wiped the dagger off on his shirt and sheathed it. It wouldn’t do to let such a fine blade stand wet for too long. It wouldn’t like it.

She came creeping out of the shadows and touched his shoulder carefully, her touch somehow uncertain, as though she were checking to see if he were real. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Destroy the body. We can’t just leave a dragon lying around to be discovered."

Lianndra firmed his shoulders and stepped toward the body.

The light glinted off the deep red of the BloodStone and he remembered to pick it up. The power of immortality was something else not to be left lying around. He tucked the dragon’s heart away in an inner pocket where it would be safe.

"How are you going to get rid of something that big?" Chelsea asked, pointing at the body.

He shrugged. "Oh, I don’t know. I just thought that I would…" He threw his arms out, pointing them at the body and screamed a Word.

Flame shot out to engulf the body. There was the heavy odor of seared flesh, and in moments the dragon was gone. Eaten away by flames so impossibly hot they could have burned through steel in a second.

"Holy shit! How did you do that?"

A smile quirked his lips. "I just remembered something I had forgotten. Something from my past life."

DEZI

They were almost where they were going, when she sagged in mid-air. It felt as though all of her bones had suddenly gone liquid.

"What’s the matter? What should I do?" Chris asked worriedly, grabbing her arm.

She shook her head hard. "It’s over. He’s won."

"Who’s won? Lianndra? Did Lianndra win?" Chris asked.

She licked her lip. "Yes, he won. I don’t know how he did it, but he defeated the Dragon."

"Maybe we should hurry then and meet up with him?"

Dezi shook her head. "No, there’s something else for us to do. Lianndra handled the Dragon, but we have to take care of the Dark Stalker."

"What?" Chris asked in disbelief, looking at her like she was crazy.

She laughed, a completely joyless sound. "I just realized something. Even though he beat the Dragon, I don’t know if he’ll be able to fight Magnus. You saw how frightened he was."

Chris looked at her and raised an eyebrow, something he had learned to do from watching Lianndra. Hanging there in the air, he was so beautiful, the moon gleaming on his face, making his features shine as clear and perfect as a dream.

It was hard for her to understand how such a strange thing could have happened. That she could have fallen in love with someone so much younger and more innocent than herself had never even entered her mind. Yet here she was, Chris by her side.

Before Chris, the only person she had ever been able to love was Lianndra. And that mostly out of loyalty to her liege lord.

She knew that feudalism was an outdated notion, but vampire society was built and kept up by people that had lived through all of the centuries from beginning to end. People that remembered a time when knights rode around on chargers, or people hunted with spears and wore animal skins for clothes. And though she wasn’t all that old, was quite young from some points of view, she had had the idea of loyalty drilled into her for hundreds of years. Before that, she was a peasant that had known only that her lord was next to God and that she was to do everything he or his lady wished of her.

It was no stretch of the imagination to see Lianndra in the role of her new lord. He was her protector from those stronger than she, the one that made sure all of her debts were paid, even if it meant paying them himself. But he also wore the body of a child. So young and vulnerable appearing that her loyalty had long since become love and caring.

Just knowing that he was in a position to fear someone else, that someone might actually harm him, was absolutely terrible. She couldn’t help the need that filled her. The need to go out and destroy anything that stood against him.

Her feeling for Magnus was a rage almost as strong as Lianndra’s. A need to utterly demolish the man. To leave nothing behind but blood and guts, or maybe, even less.

"What are you thinking?" Chris asked.

She looked at him for a long moment, seeing all that he was, had been and someday would be. There would always be that sort of naïvety about him, as though he could never really see the bad in a person until it was rubbed right in his face. It was a quality she could well imagine treasuring, something that would make her love him all the more as time passed by. But for now, it was getting in the way of what she knew she had to do. It was holding her back and making her wonder about the wisdom of her actions, something she couldn’t do and hope to survive the night.

"You’re going to have to stay here," she said.

He looked around bemusedly. "Hel-lo, we’re in mid-air. I don’t think this is exactly the most safest of places. What if a low flying airplane comes by and knocks me down? That wouldn’t exactly be pretty, now would it?"

"Don’t be an asshole, you know what I mean," Dezi said. "You have to stay out of the way. I can’t go in there and hope to win if I’m worried about you."

Chris squared his shoulders and his chin suddenly seemed rock hard. "You’re not getting rid of me. I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work. If you’re going to go into danger, you’re just going to have to get used to my being there with you. I can’t let you go in there alone."

She might have fought him, but she could see the shadow of his mind, and there was no give in him. He knew what he was going to do and he was going to do it. It would have been a complete waste of time for her to hang around arguing.

"Do you promise to stay back and out of the way?" she asked.

He held up three fingers of his left hand and clapped his right hand to his heart. "Scout’s honor! I will definitely try not to get myself killed. I swear."

Dezi looked at him for a long moment, trying to see what was in his soul.

"Come on Dezi! You can trust me," Chris said. "I promise not to get killed. I promise!"

She sighed deeply. She wanted to believe him, but sometimes things happened that no one had any control over. One of those things was death.

"God deliver me from over-rambunctious idiots," she said, rolling her eyes. "Come on, we’ve got work to do."

She grabbed Chris’ hand and together they went soaring across the night sky, back the way they had come. Back toward fate.