In this moment, Tawk realized he liked crazy.
A whoosh of power blasted through the night sky above them, shaking the ground under their feet, and bending thebranches of the neighborhood trees. Heat blistered his skin, and this part, he didn’t want Tammy feeling.
Wreck was here.
Tammy gasped at the heat, but Tawk was already there, yanking the weapon from her hands, pulling her to his chest and wrapping his wings around her to protect her skin from whatever Wreck intended.
The ground shook beneath his feet and he knew Wreck had landed.
He could hear Connor and the others retreating. They were cussing up a storm as they went, and there it was—there was the scent of fear.
Samuel’s stupid, “I’m not afraid of Wreck,” comment flittered across Tawk’s mind as he turned to watch Jess’s brother scramble into the SUV.
Everyone should be afraid of Wreck.
“Shit,” he murmured as a wave of flames blasted down the road right for the SUV. A figure engulfed in flames was walking, hand out, fire and lava pouring from his palm.
Whatever was happening was filling Tawk up, feeding him, and the scent of magic filled the air. His blood boiled and he hugged Tammy tighter to him, trying to use her as an anchor to this world.
The SUV tried to run right through Wreck, but the flaming figure pushed both hands out and lifted the car and slammed it into the side of a tree. It buckled in half.
Holy fuck,” Tammy whispered in horror.
There were no survivors from what Wreck had just done.
There was no movement from the SUV.
A rumble escaped Tawk as he released Tammy and made his way toward the rubble. It burst into flames.
“What are you doing?” Tammy screamed.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t have an answer.
All he knew was he needed to…needed to…keep Jess safe.
Keep Jess safe?
The scent of magic filled his head, filled his soul. The dragon ripped from him suddenly, and he was sky-bound, beating his wings against the air currents as they stretched and grew. The pain of the Change didn’t even exist in this moment. He was in his mostly-human form one moment, and a dragon the next. No pain, no shattering of bones, or stretching of muscle, or ripping of skin. He circled back to the wreckage. God, the wind felt good against his scales. No one was coming out of their houses yet. They would be pouring into the street at any moment, their cell phones up, capturing video for the nightly news.
They would catch the phoenix and the dragon killing.
Wreck’s Mountains would be finished after tonight.
For some reason, that realization didn’t stop his trajectory toward the wreckage. He blew fire across the already engulfed SUV and then dipped down to devour the ashes of the burning grass around it. He needed another minute for the SUV to melt down.
Tammy was screaming something, but he couldn’t understand her words. Something hit him across the face once, twice.
Ignoring the sting, he scooped ashes and twitched his head skyward as he swallowed the magic-laced ashes down his long throat, headed for the stars once more.
“Tawk! Stop!” Tammy screamed.
He could hear her. He could understand her words, and something about the desperation in them did something awful to him. He fell from the sky. He fell fast. Too fast. He catapulted to earth and slammed back into…himself.
Tawk opened his eyes and was shocked to his bones to find his hands around Connor’s polar bear’s throat. The massive bearwas on the ground, in the middle of the road, eyes rolled back in his head, his air passage completely cut off by Tawk’s steel grip on him.
What the hell?
