Eona: The Last Dragoneye

heartbeat.

“Eona!” Kygo’s voice. I opened my eyes. His tall figure flashed past.

I dropped onto my knees in the watery mud, dragging all of my weight against Dillon’s hold, but his savage strength jerked me back up into stumbling submission. Power prickled along our bound hands.

“Five,” he yelled.

“Dillon, what are you doing?” I yelled.

“With you, I’m strong enough,” he screamed.

Strong enough for what?

Around us the rain slanted, caught in the roaring gusts of a sudden wind from the northwest. Kygo flashed past again, bent into the brutal slam of air, his swords drawn. I tried to call his name, but water filled my eyes and mouth.

“Six.”

I shook my head, fighting for sight and breath. A smear of dark figures coalesced into running soldiers, their battle cries broken into a staccato wail by the buffeting wind and the spine-snapping momentum of our spins.

“Dillon, the soldiers!” I screamed.

“Seven!”

His eyes were closed, head craned back. The drone of his chant rose into a shrill keen that matched the shriek of the wind. I tasted the ancient power within it. It dried my mouth like a sour plum, but something else lay within the bitterness. A familiar, sweet tang of cinnamon — the taste of the red dragon’s power. Was he calling my dragon? Impossible, yet there were also the faint notes of vanilla and orange. Lord Ido’s beast. Dillon’s ravings sharpened into one clear moment of fury: I want him to die.

Merciful gods, he was using me to kill Ido.

“Dillon, no!” I slammed my body back, yanking at his hands, but I was still held fast.

“Eight.”

From nearby came the clash of steel meeting steel. Swords! My heart contracted into a hard ball, then burst back into drumming fear. Had the soldiers attacked Kygo? A dark knot of struggling men flickered past. Ryko, beating back three soldiers.

“Nine.”

There was nothing I could do to stop Dillon in the earthly plane; he was too strong. Focusing on his ecstatic face, I tried to shift into mind-sight. It was like forcing my way through a briar made of pelting water and panting terror. As he spun me around, I managed three deep breaths. On the fourth, the gray-green earthly plane yielded to the iridescence of the energy world.

“Ten.”

I staggered into the next spin, disoriented by the sudden assault of bright color. Before me, Dillon’s flesh and blood shifted into the streaming pathways of his energy body. I gasped, repulsed by the swollen network of dark power that flowed through him in a thick, oily slip. What had happened to his Hua? Even the seven points of power along his spine — usually pumping with the silvery life force — were black and bloated. And something else was wrong with them. I stared at the heart- point in his chest, only a faint tinge of its green vigor left in the murky depths. It was spinning in the wrong direction.

He raised his head, the dark energy swarming through his eye sockets.

“Eleven,” he said and smiled. “He’s dying.”

My head snapped back as he pulled me into the second- to-last pivot. I locked my eyes on the crimson dragon above, desperate for a fixed point of sanity. Her huge, sinuous body thrashed against an invisible enemy. Ruby claws raked the air in futile slashes. A channel of bright gold Hua stretched between her and Dillon — he was siphoning her power, with no return of vital energy. With no defense against the ten bereft dragons.

“Dillon, let her go. Before the others come. You can’t control this!”

“I can do anything,” he yelled.

Fury roared through me, bringing a new surge of strength. He was hurting my dragon. Using my power.

“Eona!” I screamed, calling our shared name, but there was no answering cascade of golden energy through me. It was all streaming into Dillon. Somehow, he was blocking us from union. Another channel, thin and stuttering, leached from the blue dragon. The beast was barely an outline, its small, pale body rolling in agony.

“Dillon, stop it! You’re hurting them.” A terrible thought seized me — could he kill the dragons?

He cannot. Ido’s voice. It was barely a whisper in my mind, ragged with pain and effort.

Are the others coming, Ido? Can you hold them back?

They will not come near the Black Folio, he rasped. Stop the boy from draining my dragon. Please, before— His voice broke into a scream that ripped through me.

“How?” I yelled. “How do I stop him?”

Get the book, Ido panted. Cut him from its power.

I did not want to touch the book.

“Twelve!” Dillon shouted, triumphant.

He wrenched me into the final spin, breaking my hold on the energy world. Its jewel colors slid back into the dull, wet landscape of the mountainside. With a shrieking rush, the rain and wind disappeared, the flooded ground suddenly dry and hard under my stumbling feet. No more driving rain. My face, gown, hair: all dry. Ryko and the three soldiers flashed past again, but they were no longer fighting. All four men were staring up at the sky.

“Look at that!” Dillon shouted through a new roar of gushing water. He stopped spinning, the sudden halt jerking me into a gasping standstill. “Look at what I can do.” He threw his head back, laughing.

Above, the rain was still streaming from the heavy clouds, but not downward. It was horizontal, sucked into a ring that circled the entire slope like an immense whirlpool suspended in the air. It spun around us, a thundering torrent four houses high that ripped up trees and bushes into its swirling sluice. All of us, friend and foe, were corralled in its center, our sanctuary already shrinking as the vortex churned across the pine trees, yanking them into its swelling depths.

“Dillon, push it back,” I roared. “Push it back!”

A shrill animal scream cut through the booming rush. A horse broke out of a thicket near the churning wall, dragging Solly behind it by its reins.

“Solly, let go,” Vida yelled. She and Dela pulled the other two horses clear. “Let go!”

The stocky man released his hold and tucked into a ball, barely escaping the slicing hooves. The horse galloped past us — eyes rolling white — toward Ryko and the soldiers. All four men still stood gaping at the expanding water and debris, the horse’s pounding progress lost in the deafening rumble.

“Ryko, move!” Kygo yelled. But he was too far away.

The horse plowed into the middle of the group, stamping over Ryko and a screaming soldier. For a moment horror stole my breath; then the islander moved, rolling away from the frenzied beast. A few lengths away, the water swept up a chunk of mountainside in an explosion of cracking wood and earth.

Dillon looked up at his handiwork, his delight draining into sudden pallor. “It’s too big.” A fine spray of cool water wet my face and Dillon’s hair. He dropped my unbound hand, digging his freed fingers into his forehead. “It hurts,” he gasped. “Is it supposed to hurt?”

“Give me the book.” I dug at our pearl shackle. “Let me help you.”

“No!” He shoved me in the chest, pushing me back a step. “You want my power. Just like my lord.” He bared his teeth in a vicious smile. “Can you hear him? He’s screaming.”

I grabbed him by the front of his tunic. “Dillon, you can’t kill Ido. If he dies, we die.” I shook him. “Do you understand? We have to save him!”

“Save him?” Dillon spat the words. “I’m going to kill him. Before he kills me.”

His yellowed eyes bulged with hate. He would never save Ido. Never help me. I felt the roaring water around us falter, the fine mist gathering into drops that hit my face with ominous weight. Dillon was losing control.

I had one chance to get the book before he killed us all. But he was stronger than me in every way. What did I have left?