Black Briar (8 page)

A muscle in the
gargouille’s
mouth ticked as he rubbed the lower end of the staff across his backside, like it would ebb the sting. “Sybille,” he growled.

She flipped him off. “Nova.”

RyMjin and Maleficent collided again, locked and tumbled, drifting through the clouds like reptilian wrecking balls. The kinetic force of every blow shattered the air.
Boom! Boom! Roar! Boom!

Sweat. She could feel it pebbling on her brow in corporal reality. Exhaustion. Adrenaline. What was experienced in the dream world was felt—however muted the sensation might be—in corporeal reality. And Nova always left her in pieces.

Always.

Never did she leave his lair without feeling like her legs were going to give out from beneath her, and he was far from a disappointment in the realm of the Fade. Such was his focus. His mastery.

Not today, motherfucker.

Maleficent bowled a knotted RyMjin into an abyss of black clouds and reared into the sky, head swiveling at unnatural angles as she searched for the fallout. Her bat-like wings were heavy, slowly keeping her from stalling out completely, but she was slipping. Oozing down out of the sky as she waited.

The beast was hiding in the clouds. Using them like a cloak. A downpour of water and midst poured from the sudden clash of the thunder and rain. A shadow passed over Sybille as she watched RyMjin sore over her in rambling coils, four-toed claws open and snout aimed to ram Maleficent on the back of the shoulder. It would spiral her out of flight rhythm and she’d fall. Unacceptable.

Sybille’s staff ignited with green flame and she boomeranged it into the sky, rod spinning like a metal pinwheel. If she was lucky, it would decapitate the beast completely and Nova would be beaten. But the
gargouille
materialized on Ryojin’s back. He twisted in the newly formed gold and jade-crusted leather saddle and barred the blow with his staff.

Her weapon jarred, thrown off course, and she flashed her teeth. “Give up.”

“Never.”

RyMjin hit Maleficent like a battering ram, but embraced her massive body and sank his teeth into her shoulder. His plumed wings beat the air quickly, holding them in flight even as they were supposed to fall. The she-dragon roiled, snapping and snarling, but the menace just wasn’t here. Her tail snapped out and bound Ryojin’s short bracketed leg, and then, she…mewled.

RyMjin had been birthed from Nova’s soul; the
gargouille’s
control over it was complete. Maleficent had been captured, tamed—but just barely. Every day was a trying exercise and a constant argument. Dragons needed no riders and they were certainly born with a sense of their place in the world, which, of course, was above just about everything else. And though she had been commanded to fight, Maleficent’s will to do so with obedience was waning.

She lowered her snout, snapping and purring at the dragon holding her captive. Her tail was raised, clinging to him. Offering him the access he needed to ravage his reward right there in the middle of the planetary coliseum.

“You little…slut,” Sybille snapped and opened her hand, calling her weapon to her palm. She struck the tower with the bladed tip. “You’re always like this. I swear to God, it’s a wonder why I let you out to go terrorizing and pillaging at all. Over a thousand years old and needs a goddamn chastity belt…”

The spindle witch evaporated into a scornful cloud of purple midst and small spectral dragons, and then, reappeared, saddled on an obsidian seat banded to the nape of her dragon’s neck. The
lung’s
gaping jaws were sunk deep into the she-dragon’s muscle and flesh, the beast’s snout pushing against Sybille’s outer thigh. Whiskers and scarlet leather lips were ticklish and warm against her ankle. Smoking. Blistering it with steam.

The fucker
. She frowned at RyMjin over her shoulder and met the
gargouille’s
sweeping black diamond gaze. He was peering over the side of his beast like as long as he kept her in his sights, the battle was already won.
 
The
smug fucker
.

“Submit, Sybille.” Nova doubled forward and reached for her. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I want…” RyMjin pulsed with ardor beneath him and the heat scalded her skin.

Ha.

Let it all burn.

She barred her scepter at her chest like a shield and drew from fireworks. Whistle. Collision. And finally, a bomb of color exploded from the green gem, blinding everything in a mile radius.

All fell.

They spiraled into a double helix, fangs and claws locked in descent.

The saddle was wide, with a high post at the front, keeping her locked in. Keeping her seated. But just barely. There were no reins as a dragon was not a mount, but a partner. Wind whipped and thrashed. Everything was blurred together. She gaped like a fish for breath, but she didn’t need sight or oxygen to fight. All she needed was imagination…and will.

Should she die young, let that be the fucking hymn that was left behind. Etch and chisel that beneath her crooked and twisted name. Her lifeless corpse could be planted on a velvet bed of roses. Let the padded cell or the crystal coffin in the middle of an enchanted forest become her everlasting tomb. But first, let these war torn love lyrics stain her book. Let this be the ballad that was told of Sybille, Princess of Psychopaths.

Let her story be of a mighty sorceress and dragontamer, a sinister dreamspinner with a wild and heavy heart. To love and to be loved would never be her prayer. Her book could be paved with glorious moments of defeat, but let her be free. And let her fame begin and die there.

Amen.

Thrashing wings nicked her cheeks and chapped her lips with scalpel kisses, air pummeled her furiously. Universe caving in around them.

But Sybille Prince was no ingénue.

She clung to one of the dragon’s onyx scales and screamed, “Maleficent! Fly!” Tears. “Free!”

A bone-cracking roar and the she-dragon’s wings unfurled with tattered black fury, disengaging Ryojin’s hold. Wind filled the membranes of her wings, banking the fall, slowing it, but they’d fallen too far. Too fast.

They pounded a crater in the planet.

Pain. Bones shook within the confines of flesh. In corporeal reality, Sybille’s body lurched off the mattress as she was nearly flung from the saddle, her staff lost sometime during the fall.

Her headdress was gone, blonde curls waving wildly as Maleficent roiled, refusing in royal outrage to land on her back. She bucked her wings and heaved the landing male off her. It was a short reprieve. He rolled back only to snap and slash forward. She ducked and popped him with a stinging backlash. The tip of Maleficent’s tail snapped into Nova’s back. Ripped it. Finally.

Peering over his mangled shoulder, Nova flashed teeth as RyMjin roiled. “Crazy bitch.”

Sybille sank low over her dragon as they rounded one another in the pit. “Watch your ass, Maleficent,” she sneered and spat out a tooth, blood dribbling from her the corner of her red lipstick, “Or we die here.”

RyMjin slashed. Claws met claws. Roars, fire, brimstone. Her blonde tresses and billowing velvet skirts swept in the wind. Onyx eyes peered at her through the whipping waves of jet locks. Dragons fighting between them. Blood and gore. Destruction. Death. And two dreamspinners watching each other, reaching for each other, through the smoke and devastation. Star-crossed lovers.

Why won’t he just die already?
She shouldn’t be looking at him, she shouldn’t have been dividing her focus, but she did look. And she was damned for it. The minute the thread of her control over Maleficent snapped, the animal was thrown into a conniption. A roiled mass of fury, screeching and crying out, trying to find its bearing. Black bridal veil finally lifted.

The tower shook, brittle briar cracking.

Sybille was thrown completely from the pit, landing with a crack and heavy roll on vibrant green grass. She didn’t know where the patch of earth had come from. She hadn’t willed it into existence, but she couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. Pain radiated from one end of her nervous system to another as she rolled onto her back, breath coming in labored pants. Wet soil clung to her fingers.
My dragon…
She clawed into the earth and tried to pull herself into a seated position.
I can’t leave her…

To lose one’s consciousness in the Fade…

Her dirt crusted eyes fluttered open, long lashes covered in copper powder as she stared at the battle field in horror. Absolute, anguished horror.

Maleficent was gone.

Kicked from her sphere of control by a ruthless
gargouille
, poised and mounted still on his beast. Before she knew it, RyMjin was lumbering toward her, footfall similar to that of a cat. Low, slow, and prowling. His tail flicked from side to side as he crushed the soil near her hand beneath his massive claws and bared his chest to the moons, snout raised. Victorious at last.

She collapsed into the plush grass. Laughing. Crying. And then, she was simply…lost.

To lose grasp on your consciousness in the Fade was to leave yourself open to possession, body theft…utter madness. It was to leave yourself open and defenseless to someone else’s sick little world. And, of course, there were some dreamspinners who lost themselves completely, cursed to wander the Fade. Separated from time and reality, most forgot who they were in life all together. They forgot how to wake. Comatose. Doomed to slumber forever. Sleeping Beauties. Resting in peace.

Sybille’s eyes fluttered open. Obviously, she was still dreaming. Well, it was a dream, but it wasn’t her dream. If it were, she would recognize the Mongolian blue sky. It was the kind of sky that convinced you the world was round. Domed over like a snow globe. A perfect, pristine, azure bowl with fluffy white clouds spun into sensual shapes of
tengus
and dying phoenixes.

She couldn’t see most of them, her view obscured by the arboreal canopy. The bed’s headboard was the center. The heart of two dragons, bodies carved out of an ancient cherry blossom tree and the mattress made from a wash of flowers held between their folded wings. Airbrushed pink petals raining, akin to sweet snowfall.
Where am I?

Pillowed in her hair and a valley of cherry blossoms, she lolled her head to the side and drank in the sprawling rock gardens and bamboo fountains. Shrines. What wasn’t sand and tranquil bridge was water. The pond beveled out, home to schools of mystical white and orange splattered bearded koi fish. In the middle of the elegance was a small black pagoda roofed house walled away behind a labyrinth of black roses with plum thorns. And emerging from the storm of blooms carried on the winds was a samurai striding through the schism as is he’d simply been born from it.

Her heart danced like a
koma
on a board, and she turned her cheek. “Come to claim your winnings…?”

The samurai’s shadow was an omen stretching over her as he crushed the grass growing near the bed beneath his boots. Hair wild and unkempt, licking down the side of his kimono. “It’s never been like that. I think you wish it was. I think you’ve tried to make it so in the past. Easier for you…” He sank to his knees. “Perhaps you’re right. Because if it were like that, if I touched you that way, this,” he lowered his mouth, lips hovering inches from hers, “wouldn’t pain us so much.”

She was never the one to pull that trigger and kiss him first. Not ever. If fucking hard was on the menu, kissing while you did it wasn’t. That’s how silly girls caught feelings. She simply would not and could not allow those kinds of rules to be broken. But Nova…

Nova allowed for no law to exist but the one he hammered into eternity himself.

There was no timid touching of the lips. No shared breaths and sighs—he covered her mouth with his and owned it. All of it. Devouring oxygen out of her mouth like he was determined to wake her from slumber with the threat of suffocation. Her thighs quaked and she kicked out, fingers rooting through the mass of blooms in search of purchase.

No mercy. None.

He drew her tongue into his warm, metallic mouth—sucking on it, nibbling. Giving it an abnormal amount of heated sensual attention. So erotic. Different. Perhaps he was teaching her. And as always, he taught her through example. She caught his dexterous tongue between her teeth and suckled on it, lavishing the same attention on it as she normally gave his cock.