Chapter 114 114
Annabeth's POV:
"I said ON YOUR KNEES," he repeated.
"Go to hell," I said.
He smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile. "You're the red one, aren't you? The hybrid." He took a step closer. "They said you were dangerous. But you know what I see? A scared little girl playing with fire she can't control."
The other guards laughed. Actually laughed.
"You have no idea what I can do," I said.
"Yeah?" He raised his gun, pointing it at my chest. "Show me."
And something happened inside me... I don't know how to describe it. It was like a dam breaking, except the dam had been there my whole life and I didn't even know it existed until now.
The fire in my chest wasn't just fire anymore. It was bigger somehow. It was something that had been sleeping for eighteen years.
It started in my spine. This crack, loud enough that I heard it, and then another, and another, my vertebrae reshaping themselves, elongating, and it HURT. God, it hurt more than anything I'd ever felt, more than the harpoon that hit Kaelen, more than watching him fall, more than the days of silence in that white cell.
I screamed. Or I tried to. What came out was something between a scream and a roar.
My shoulders widened, bones grinding against each other, and I could feel my skin stretching, tearing, scales pushing through the gaps. Red scales. Blood red, the color of my father's fire. My hands curled into claws, black and sharp, and I watched my fingers fuse and reform with this horrible fascination because this was my body, this was ME, and I was becoming something else entirely.
The guards were shooting now. I heard the gunshots, felt the bullets hit my chest, my arms, my neck, but they just... bounced off. Pinged against scales that were harder than Kevlar and fell to the floor like nothing.
Wings. I had WINGS. They burst from my back with a wet tearing sound and a spray of blood, massive and red, and when they spread they knocked three guards into the wall. One of them didn't get up.
My neck stretched. Kept stretching. My jaw cracked and reformed, filled with teeth that hadn't been there before, teeth that could bite through steel.
Suddenly, the walls and ceiling couldn’t hold me anymore and the concrete started to crash and fall over me.
And when I opened my mouth, fire poured out. Real fire. Dragon fire. Not the weak flames I'd been throwing before but a WALL of heat that turned two guards to ash before they could even scream.
I was a dragon.
I was a real, fucking DRAGON, even when hybrids were not supposed to transform.
The pain was still there, everywhere, my whole body screaming at the wrongness of what was happening, but under the pain I felt like I'd been wearing a costume my whole life and I'd finally taken it off.
The remaining guards were running now, or trying to. I swept my tail, this massive thing I hadn't even realized I had, and sent three of them flying. One hit the wall with a crack that meant he wasn't getting up. Another landed at my feet and I stepped on him without thinking, felt his ribs cave under my weight.
The leader, the one with the scar, was trying to crawl toward the doors. His gun was gone, his legs weren't working right. I didn't give him time to get far. One breath of fire and he was gone. Just ash.
When it was over, when the last guard had stopped moving and the hallway was filled with smoke and the smell of charred meat, I stood there breathing hard, my massive lungs expanding and contracting, and I didn't know what to do.
I was huge. I could barely move in the corridor, my wings were folded tight against my back and my tail curled around my legs.
"Annabeth." Kalessi's voice, small and scared, coming from somewhere behind me.
I turned my head, careful not to crush her with my jaw, and saw her pressed against the wall. She was staring at me with wide eyes, and I couldn't tell if she was terrified or amazed or both.
"Annabeth, can you hear me? Can you understand me?"
I tried to say yes but all that came out was a rumble, low and deep.
"You need to change back." She stepped closer, her hand reaching toward my snout. "You need to... I don't know how it works, but you need to find the human part of yourself and hold onto it."
I didn't know how to do that. The dragon form felt natural now, felt RIGHT, and the idea of going back to that small weak body made something in me rebel.
But I couldn't stay like this. I couldn't fit through doors. Couldn't help anyone escape. Couldn't hold Kaelen when I found him. I couldn’t even escape by myself unless I kept breaking walls.
Kaelen...
I reached for the bond, desperate, and his response was immediate. Shock. Awe. And underneath it all, love. So much love that it made my dragon heart stutter in my massive chest.
I focused on that. On him. On the way his hands felt on my skin, the way his voice sounded when he said my name, the way the bond hummed between us when we were close. Human things. Annabeth things.
The transformation reversed. Slower this time. Still painful, god, so painful, my bones cracking back into their original shapes, my scales receding into my skin, my wings folding and shrinking and disappearing. I felt myself getting smaller, weaker, more vulnerable, and I hated it but I kept going because I had to.
When it was over I was on my knees on the concrete floor, naked and shaking, covered in blood that was mostly mine this time. The skin on my back was torn where the wings had been, and my hands were raw, and everything hurt.
A sound to my left. One of the guards, not dead after all, was dragging himself across the floor with one arm. His legs were bent at wrong angles and half his face was burned, but he was still moving. Still looking at me with one good eye.
"W-what..." he rasped, blood bubbling on his lips. "W-what the fuck are you?"
I stood up, not caring that I was naked, not caring about anything except the fire still burning in my chest.
"I'm Marcus Thorne's daughter." I walked toward him, flames flickering to life in my palm. "And I'm just as fucking legendary as he is."
The fire took him before he could scream.
"Here." Kalessi's voice came from behind me, and when I turned she was already moving, stepping over bodies, pulling at the tactical vest on one of the dead guards. "Here, put this on, quickly."
She helped me into the guard's pants first, way too big but better than nothing, then the shirt, then the vest. Her hands were shaking but her movements were efficient, and I realized she'd probably done this before. Helped people after trauma. Taken care of wounded dragons.
"The boots," she said, already unlacing them from the guard's feet. "They'll be too big but—"
"It's fine." I grabbed them from her, shoved my feet in. "We need to move. Erik. The other prisoners."
"Can you walk? The first transformation is always traumatic and really rough."
Good question. I tried to stand and my legs buckled. Kalessi caught me, her thin arms stronger than they looked.
"I got you," she said. "Lean on me."
"No, I..." I took a breath. Forced my legs to work. "I'm okay. I'm okay."
I wasn't okay. I was about as far from okay as I'd ever been. But we didn't have time for me to fall apart.
Through the bond I felt Kaelen getting closer. He'd felt everything, the transformation, the pain, the fear, and he was running. Coming for me.
"Erik," I said, straightening up. "Let's go."
Kalessi looked at me for a long moment, her golden eyes searching my face. Then she nodded.
"This way," she said. "And Annabeth?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you." Her voice cracked on the word. "For coming. For... for all of this."
I didn't know what to say to that. So I just grabbed her arm and started walking, stepping over the bodies of the men I'd killed, heading deeper into the facility.
We had more people to save.