Chapter Eleven
Darkness engulfed him, cool air blew around him and danger lurked.
The feeling was familiar and Steele walked with booted feet over a ground made of thick black smoke. Houses surrounded him, and they all looked the same, structures with doors and windows and rooftops. He wasn’t alone here in the world of dreams. Anything that could be imagined existed on this place. Things long since departed from the other realms, beasts, demonics, angels, memories, all lurked around any corner, behind a door, or with the next breath.
This was Steele’s home away from home ever since his birth. As one of few Dream Drakons, he was known here, especially by the Reaper. It was those cool white eyes that Steele knew followed him on this journey because the Reaper knew exactly what he was doing. It planned to stop him and Steele planned to do everything in his power to keep that from happening. Even if doing so ended in his death.
“You cannot have her.” He spoke the words into the darkness as he continued to move, traveling to the rooftop where the ultimate showdown would eventually take place.
“You cannot keep her,” the Reaper’s hollow voice replied.
Steele walked with purposeful steps, prepared to take this battle wherever it needed to go as long as Ravyn stayed safe. As long as she stayed alive.
The wind picked up as he began an uphill trek. In what seemed like moments but he knew was actually hours on the Human Realm, he walked until coming to a stop at the sight of the female form ten feet in front of him. Steele didn’t have to look back to know that the houses that had once surrounded him were now beneath him. He was on the roof and she was there too, holding that dagger in her hand.
Steele closed his eyes, seeing that same dagger enclosed in its sheath as it sat on the table in his private suite back at the Office. But here, in this place, she held it and it glowed in her hand as tiny waves of that same light shimmered throughout her body.
Her hair, long and straight, hanging down past one shoulder, blew in the window as she stood with one hip extended, the opposite leg thrust forward, shoulders squared. It was a dominant stance, a sexy silhouette, a powerful message. As he stepped closer his heart pounded. That was new. As many times as he’d walked in this particular dream, he’d never felt that effect before.
“Give me the dagger.” Words that had not come to him in another dream stumbled from his mouth and for the first time Steele realized his dream was changing. The dagger was changing it.
She turned her head slowly, the corner of her mouth tilted in a teasing smile, her brown eyes shimmering with flecks of the same warm gold as the dagger in her hand.
“I told you it was mine from the start.”
Her voice was heavier in this place, still feminine but with a definite hint of unchecked power.
“We made a deal.” He continued moving closer, fully intending to take that dagger from her.
“I am the curse.”
And with those four words she turned until she was facing him. Everything about her body seemed different, stronger, sexier. The pants she wore clung to her toned legs, cupping the curve of her hips then easing along the flat planes of her abs. The long-sleeved shirt hugged her like a second skin, keeping her ample breasts high. This wasn’t the Ravyn he’d seen in the dream before and it certainly wasn’t the Ravyn he’d met on the Human Realm.
She stood dangerously close to the edge of the roof top. He knew because a familiar orange glow had begun to rise in the dark backdrop behind her. The sound of licking flames beckoned his beast and his fingers tingled with the beast’s urge to shift.
“You are Ravyn Walsh and I will keep you safe,” he said, but felt as if those words might now be a futile request.
Her laughter co-signed that thought. “You cannot stop the inevitable. You know that, Dream Drakon.”
How did she know what he was? Because he’d shown her when he’d shifted into the dragon and brought her to the Office. She’d seen him and his dragon had had the chance to feel her for itself. It enjoyed that feeling and was ready to touch her once more.
But Ravyn hadn’t remembered this, or at least she hadn’t when they’d been having dinner because she hadn’t spoken a word about it. Steele eyed this version of Ravyn suspiciously.
“I won’t let you die.”
“You have no choice here.” She took a step back.
“She is correct. You have no choice here.” The Reaper’s voice sounded and in the next second the warrior with the skeletal face stood directly in front of him. “Only I make claims in your dreams, Drakon. That is the way it has always been.”
Steele let the beast have its way and in the next blink his human form distorted and extended, crumpled and curved, until the huge bronze-colored beast was alive, its jaw dropping to display rows of wicked sharp teeth.
The Reaper relaxed its spindly arms and in their place weapons that resembled cannons appeared. With a clicking sound bullets laced with a lethal death serum circled in the cannon’s chamber. Blood dripped from each arm, representing the souls that had already been claimed.
“I am the curse!” Ravyn’s voice sounded over the flames and the Reaper’s artillery.
The beast could see her taking another step back. With one more step she would fall into the fire that roared beneath her.
“Let me be what I am!” she continued, but the beast was already on the move, spreading its mammoth wings until it blanketed the air
