Page 52 of On the Road

We were not going to Vegas. I couldn’t think of anywhere Zee was more likely to be recognized, then put on a pedestal and worshipped by all his adoring fans. The chances of him being subtle were about as likely as Victor wearing a rainbow shirt and singing “YMCA” in heels. Impossible.

I pushed open the motel room door—and jolted to a stop.

My brother stood in the middle of the room.

My heart stopped too, and my thoughts. Every part of me seized, frozen by fear.

“Close the door, Mydros.” His voice was deeper than his appearance suggested, and his accent sounded strange to my American-tuned ears.

Swallowing, I closed the door on the distant voices of Victor and Zee arguing over how Vegas was both a brilliant and terrible idea. They had to leave, they had to go now or Syros would kill them.

I had to get them away.

If I could distract Syros, they might have a chance.

I had to do something.

Anything.

I stared. Stuck.

He shouldn’t have been here.

How had he found us?

Was he alone?

“It took a while to find you.” He tapped the tower of Oreo boxes. “When you run, you run hard. I remember that. But your demon friend made the mistake of posting about these cookies on his social media feeds, and it just so happened the name of this motel was in the background of one of those images.”

Oh, Zee . . .

“I’ll go with you,” I blurted, voice small. “Let’s go. You and me. Right now.”

Syros’s smirk cut like a slash across his face. The corner of his lips tugged on the vicious scar in his cheek. He could have used glamor to hide it, but instead he kept it on display . . . for me. “No, our original deal is off the table. You had your chance to save them and failed.”

He was going to kill Victor and Zee. They’d try to fight, and they’d hold out for a while, but even if we worked together, we wouldn’t be strong enough to stop him.

He’d kill them because he could, because he wanted to, because they were nothing to him and everything to me . . . because I deserved it.

Syros tucked his thumbs into his pockets, making himself look approachable. We even looked alike. Brothers. So human, so harmless, definitely not dragons the size of this motel and the bar combined.

My disguise had been perfect, and so was his.

“You always knew I was coming for you,” he said.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You believed you’d killed me?” His thick, wicked laugh brought back all the times he’d hunted me down. All the times I’d barely escaped his jaws. All the times I’d fled, broken and bleeding. “Ah, baby brother. You always were delusional.” He shrugged and looked around the motel room. “I gotta thank you, though, for doing all the heavy lifting this side of the veil. Seems like folks here aren’t afraid of dragons. It’ll make things easier when I take it all for myself.”

The hungry, predatory gleam in his eyes left no room for doubt. Gideon Cain had had aspirations of becoming a god, but he was always going to be just a megalomaniac sorcerer. My brother, however . . . He could level a city in minutes. He could raze the US capital. He could burn millions of innocent people in the blink of an eye.

No, no . . . this was . . . very bad.

“But don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you straight away. You can watch as I burn everything you love . . . burn it all and make myself king of this world. Won’t that be fun? Just like old times.”

“Just like old times . . .” I echoed, remembering the home I’d fled, full of fire and ashes.

No. Nope. Not going to happen. Not here, not ever again.