"As strong as I must be to defeat my enemy," Dax replied. A dragon's soul. Was that what fought him now? Or had Mitro found a way to trick him after all? "Do you think me your enemy?"
Does a lion name the flea his enemy?
"A flea, am I?" Dax was mildly insulted at the thought. He reached for the heat rising from the magma, drawing it to him, shaping it between his hands into a ball of fire, which he flung at the center of the insubstantial creature. But rather than punching a hole through the shimmering red mist, the fireball exploded against the surface, spreading out in tongues of flame that were swiftly absorbed. The red-mist dragon seemed to grow larger, as if the flames only made it stronger.
The enemy of heat was cold. Dax tried to drain the heat from around the veil of mist, but the heat was too intense for him to do more than cool the room a few degrees.
"If you mean to help, Old One, then help," Dax said. "There is a great evil locked inside this volcano. While I fight you, it is trying to escape."
What should I care of this evil thing? You have awakened me from my resting place and I care nothing for your troubles.
Dax puzzled over that for a moment. The dragon had no reason to care. His time was long past. All that he knew and loved was gone from the earth. Even his body was gone.
Perhaps there is no reason other than you are a dragon, and a great warrior, or so I have been led to believe.
There was a moment of silence. A dragon's soul is a mighty power. Only the strongest of vessels could hope to contain it. All others would shatter.
Power slammed toward Dax again, but this time he tried a different tack. In his years of training with the ancients of his race, he'd learned when to stand firm and when to bend like a tree in the wind. He ducked the dragon's main blast and rolled forward beneath it, coming up close to the beast's shimmering presence.
His feet sank into the edge of the magma pool. Fiery pain streaked up his legs as flesh scorched and burned. Dax shuttered his mind against the agony and tried to absorb and use the heat as the dragon's soul had absorbed and used his fireball earlier. His hands shot out, tracing wards in the air, spinning and twisting energy and the molecules of air in the room into a shining web that he cast around the insubstantial mist of the dragon's soul. A rainbow of light reflected through the room as the energy swirled around his opponent.
Determination and calm rolled through him as the net settled over the dragon. He could feel the spirit gather itself, like any creature would before it strikes. He spread his fingers wide and held them, palms out, between himself and the dragon. Gently, he touched thumb to thumb, then forefinger to forefinger, completing a circle of power, and through that circle, he drew his net of energy tight.
The beast thrashed and roared in outrage, but the bonds of his net held fast. Slowly, relentlessly, Dax pulled the net tighter and tighter. He inched his way backward, dragging the protesting weight of the dragon with him.
Heat jetted out, splashing over him like a geyser. His skin burned. His hair singed. He did not release the net. He kept pulling it through his circle of power, drawing the dragon's soul in tight, folding it in upon itself, pulling it away from the magma pool that he suspected was feeding its strength.
As he pulled, he began to weave new, cooler threads of power over the others. And with each precisely woven thread, his connection to the dragon's spirit increased. He could feel its consciousness pressing up against his own. Each writhing fight, each blast of heat and power, was as much instinctive self-protection as it was a test of Dax's own strength. As the last bit of Dax's net passed through his circle of power, a great force snapped out, but this time the power didn't strike him; it raced up the flows binding it, following them back to Dax.
"No." Realizing its intent, Dax straightened abruptly and tried to weave protective wards. But his efforts were too late, and in speaking he had left an opening, a second circle of power, only this one led into him. The soul rushed forward, a blazing pulse of light and heat that shot into his mouth and down his throat. Energy, heat, power flooded him, burning him from the inside out. He staggered back, releasing his now empty web of power.
The dragon's soul was inside him, searing him. An immense fiery presence that threatened to burst his body asunder. Dax spun a new web, only this time around himself, drawing the threads tight around his own body, adding even more strength to the skin and bone made dense by his centuries locked inside the volcano.
His skin turned dark and began to shudder. Red scales rippled down his arms. Dax held up his hands in surprise as his nails grew crystal clear and lengthened like claws ... like the dragon's own diamond talons. The change didn't feel like a normal Carpathian shapeshifting. It felt elemental, as if the transformation was happening at more than a cellular level.
Dax fought back, unwilling to relinquish his own body to the soul that had leapt into him. He willed his hand to change back, his nails to soften and shorten. Inch by inch, he fought back the change sweeping over his body, fought to keep his own form.
Inside his body, a second, similar battle raged, only this was not a battle of flesh, but a battle of minds. The dragon's soul surrounded his own and tried to absorb him into itself. It tried to dominate him. But Carpathians were predators, not prey, and Dax was a hunter of immense skill and drive and determination. He did not surrender. Not when fighting the most powerful and heinous vampire the world had ever seen, and not while fighting a powerful, ancient soul for control of his own body.
The dragon rifled through Dax's memories, tearing into his brain, past his substantial inner barriers, ripping through the outer hunter into the depths of Dax's soul. The life of aloneness. The friends and fellow hunters who had turned to evil. The other hunters who had feared and avoided him once they realized he could tell which of them was about to turn vampire. He'd known before they did. Known, and waited close by to kill them before they could harm others.
The Old One found his memories of the friends loved and lost to Mitro Daratrazanoff's evil. The family who had taken him in after his own parents were killed by yet another friend turned vampire. The wish, long forgotten now, for a lifemate of his own. The beautiful Arabejila, companion and friend for more years of life than any unmated Carpathian warrior should ever have to endure. And yet with her, all things had become bearable. The years had not weighed so heavily. The emotions lost to him as he aged had always seemed close at hand when she was near. He had always admired her. Honored her gentleness. Respected her quiet strength. And she had been strong. As strong as he was in her own way. She'd had to be to endure the ruined life Mitro had left to her.