I pushed to the front with Jeriad, Sofia following behind me.
“Three of us dragons should pass through first.” Jeriad spoke up. “Just in case there are any ogres on the other side.”
Jeriad and the others passed through the gate first. After that, Sofia and I followed, and as we landed on the other side, we found ourselves on a beach lined with high, sinister-looking walls, connected by a massive iron gate spiked with what appeared to be skulls. Human skulls. The wind was harsh and chilled even me.
As the dragons passed through the gate and landed on the beach beside us, they began shifting back into their beastly forms. Jeriad had already shifted back, having arrived before us. I was about to suggest to Sofia that we climb onto his back again, but as we approached, he spread his wings and took off into the sky before we could climb up.
“Jeriad?” Sofia called after him, her brows furrowed in confusion. We both stared as he shot toward a patch of trees in the distance. We sped up to follow him, trying to see what he was aiming for, and soon enough it became clear. There was a choked roar—a roar that wasn’t loud enough for a dragon’s—and Jeriad lifted himself back into the sky, clasping a giant ogre between his jaws. The ogre flailed wildly, only causing the dragon to clamp down harder.
More dragons took Jeriad’s cue, except—apparently not finding any more ogres on the beach—they began to fly over the walls.
“What are they doing?” Ashley asked.
The dragons didn’t take long to return. Each carried an ogre as they soared back over the walls. They touched down on the sand before tearing into the ogres’ flesh with their mighty jaws. I’d seen many gruesome things in my life, but this made even me queasy.
“It’s a good thing that Brett and Bella aren’t here to witness this,” Sofia muttered. “I doubt they’d ever sleep at night again.”
As Jeriad tore through his ogre’s gut, spilling a load of foul-smelling intestines, I caught Sofia’s waist and turned our backs on the scene. The other vampires followed my lead. We approached the waves and stared out toward the ocean. A much more pleasant view. It was clear to me now why the dragons had been so bent on arriving through this particular gate…
I turned toward Ashley—who looked close to throwing up—and belatedly answered her question. “Just a little lunch break.”
* * *
Once the dragons had finished their meal, they flew into the ocean and washed off the blood. Then, rising from the waves, the horde landed back on the beach.
I looked toward Jeriad. “Finished?”
“Apologies,” he growled. “It’s been a while since we tasted ogre… And who knows when we might taste it again.”
We passed by the huge corpses scattered about the beach—stripped to the bone—and remounted the dragons. Sofia positioned herself behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. I felt her shudder against me as we launched back into the sky.
“That was so gross,” she muttered.
I chuckled. I was happy to see her mood a little lighter since she’d found out about Jeriad’s proposal. Although there was no guarantee that we would be able to help our son get free from the jinn, we had confidence in the dragons. And at the very least, this escapade gave us the feeling that we were doing something rather than just sitting idle back on the island.
I looked downward. The dragons were moving swiftly away from the land of the ogres, so I didn’t get much of a chance to take in the landscape. We found ourselves soaring over a sprawling mass of water. Although it was daytime, it was surprisingly dark—the sky was overcast, and I didn’t remember ever seeing such thick clouds. As the dragons gained altitude, the water beneath us disappeared, and we were engulfed by the thick fog.
Sofia’s arms tightened around me a little, and her cool lips brushed against the back of my neck. “I love you, Derek,” she whispered.
A small smile formed on my lips. Detaching her arms from me, I wrapped an arm around her and shifted her so that she sat in front of me, her back against my chest. I wanted to hold her rather than have her hold me. Engulfing her small waist in my arms, I kissed the side of her face before whispering into her ear:
“I don’t blame you.”
She smirked, nudging me gently in the stomach with the back of her elbow. Then she swiveled on the dragon’s back until both of her legs hung over one side. Now that she could face me better, she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down for a long, deep kiss. I reached a hand into her warm auburn hair and closed my eyes, relishing the taste of her lips. My girl. Despite being married for almost two decades now, that was still how I thought of her. The bold, beautiful, self-willed girl I’d woken up to after four hundred years of sleep.
I ran a hand from her waist down the curve of her hip and along her thigh, my kisses growing more demanding. The thick clouds surrounding us made me feel as though we were in our own little bubble. Though I could sense the others flying nearby, we couldn’t see them, and Jeriad’s head was set forward, many feet away from us. It almost felt as though we were alone, drifting through these clouds. Just the two of us.
We spent the next few hours of the journey wrapped in each other’s arms, enjoying every moment of this opportunity to be with each other completely uninterrupted by the rest of the world.
CHAPTER 6: BEN
T he oracle had told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t possible to exorcise this Elder in the way that others had been exorcised. For one thing, his influence had been ingrained in my system for too long. That meant there was only one option: