“My Lord, he is ugly.” Christian voiced my thoughts out loud. “I sure hope your dragon form is prettier than that thing.” He pointed a negligent hand in Villi’s direction. I turned my head slightly to look at him. He sounded way too cheerful, considering what faced us. He was casually talking trash to me, as though we were headed to a party, and not a bloodbath. His eyes glittered as I’d never seen before, his nostrils flaring, his white teeth showing in a grin.

“It is.” My voice was calm. “If I looked like that thing, I’d just ask you to trance me into a coma and go turn myself into a mountain,” I joked, referring to his claim about dragons and mountains.

He laughed, a way too happy sound.

“Whenever Christian is done enjoying his slayer hard-on, we should probably get to work here.” Caleb’s voice was deep and quiet. He was back to his own form, to my great relief. I eyed him up. He looked just as excited as Christian, in his own stoic way. I could see it in his eyes, and I knew he had caught sight of the hammer.

“You can have it if we live through this, Caleb,” I told him, referring to the hammer. If there was anyone in the world that could keep that thing in safe hands, it was Caleb. Talk about making a deal with the devil. Handing over that kind of power to a psychopath… But if there was anything I knew about Caleb, it was that he wasn’t interested in any form of Godhood.

He met my stare, his positively glittering with anticipation. “I’m glad you said that, Jillian. I would hate to have to fight you for it.”

I pointed a finger at him. “You better keep it secure.”

“Oh, yes.” He took a deep breath, as though savoring the moment. It was possibly the most animated I’d ever seen him. It was an alarming sight.

My eyes moved back to the dragon. I took a deep breath, preparing.

“Take his head. And whatever happens, don’t let him touch you with that hammer,” I told them, watching Villi carefully. We charged.

Villi completely ignored the others, his focus solely on me as his dragon form ran at us, letting out an ear-piercing screech before he began to breath blue fire directly at me. This was a pointless move. Half of us were completely resistant to flame. And he was expelling this force solely at me. He had to know it was nothing more than wind to me. Intimidation, perhaps? I couldn’t remember a moment of my life when fire was something that I feared. I was fire.

Torst positively glowed as we drew closer to our goal. Drink, drink, drink, was it’s mantra in my head. This was the problem with Torst, the reason why I had put him away. He didn’t just make me hear his thoughts, he made me feel them, until I didn’t know if it was his hunger or my own. But I wanted blood, and I would have it. That was his power, and it was perfect for the problem at hand.

I jumped before the dragon reached me, swinging down with all my strength and the force of my fall as I dropped back to the earth. The axe hacked brutally at Villi’s neck, actually drawing blood with the first swing. I was shocked. Dragon scales were diamond hard and resilient. To draw blood on the first blow was a stroke of luck I had never expected.

Torst sang with triumph at the taste of blood, drawing back again quickly, hacking again and again. No human eyes could have followed the speed at which I was swinging. I would be surprised if even the non-humans with me could keep up.

Villi careened around, throwing me a good fifty yards away with the force of his push. I landed with a strong whoosh, the air knocked from my lungs. I had been so focused on just mindlessly hacking away that I’d let him catch me at a disadvantage. And that, of course, was the catch with Torst.

Villi skittered towards me clumsily, an angry bear attached to his nose, gnawing away through the scales. He tossed her off, throwing her in the opposite direction of me. It was easy to see, though, that she had done some damage, blood dripping down to the ground from his wounded nose as he approached me. Good job, Sloan, I thought, a little surprised. Getting past the scales of a dragon that quickly was no small feat.

Just short of his goal, Villi froze oddly, and I quickly saw why as a bright blue glowing sword appeared out of his belly, followed by a bloody Christian.

He had literally gutted the dragon, I saw with shock. It was then that I finally realized that Lynn must have been at him with the hammer before we got here. It was the only thing that could possibly have Villi so weak so fast. Go sis, I thought, with wonder. She had somehow laid the groundwork for a hell of a dragon slaying. Somehow she had managed to hand us the upper hand, even though Villi had had the hammer. I couldn’t imagine how, but the how was not the important part.

Villi’s head careened oddly to the side, snapping from a blow too quick for me to see. Suddenly, Caleb just appeared, wielding the hammer for another blow to the dragon’s head. I should have known he was up to something. It was when you couldn’t see Caleb that you knew he was up to the most trouble.

All of this had happened in the few seconds it took me to stand up. I staggered to my feet, stalking forward purposefully to rejoin the fight.

Christian hacked at the beast’s neck with gusto, yelling curses at the prone dragon between blows. He was truly in his element today. I joined my axe to his sword, knowing decapitation was our best bet. And the sooner the better.

Torst fed hungrily as I chopped away. The dragon’s neck was thick, but we were making short work of it. The huge bear roared as it lumbered back into the fight, tearing great hunks from the dragon’s neck.

I quickly decided that three bloodthirsty fighters were enough to take the head, and made my way to the second most important goal.