Chapter 1
26 August 2053
The underground temple of Zolin, Baja California
Eighteen years after the Awakening
Two days before the full moon
While the human woman prattled on about the war, the ancient black dragon daydreamed of immortality.
The dragon's true name was lost to the ages and now known only to her, and she barely remembered it herself, but her Tzitzime cultists called her Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly. The name was apt. Foot-wide black scales covered her underbelly, forming a coat of armor. Three-foot-long curved black claws jutted from her powerful arms and legs. Her magnificent dark wings were formed from near-impenetrable black membranes with wing fingers tipped with black bone spikes. Her powerful, long body was covered with pebbled black hide almost as tough as her scales. Her long black horns curled back from a serpentine head the size of a truck, with dark eyes that saw everything. Long black spikes ran down her spine to a powerful spiked tail that could shatter stone. Her teeth … ah, her teeth … they were her finest attribute. Each was longer than a sword and stronger than steel, and each tooth was the same beautiful black as the rest of her. She was darker than a starless night, darker than the depths of the sea … almost as dark as her daydreams.
Yes, as far as names went, Obsidian Butterfly would do.
Itzpapalotl was black death.
The woman, overweight with fleshy jowls and short dark hair, was named Tlaco and was her new Mother Smoke Heart, the new high priestess of the Tzitzime, the cult of human fools that worshipped Itzpapalotl. For a high priestess, so far, this one had been a dismal disappointment, considerably inferior to the previous Mother Smoke Heart, Rayan Zar Davi, who had served Itzpapalotl and her brother for more than two hundred years. But Rayan Zar Davi had failed the dragon and allowed intruders to attack the underground temple of Zolin and steal away the only prize that mattered, the Haanal X’ib, the elven changeling whose blood held the power to free Itzpapalotl’s sire, Memnog the World Eater, from his prison of stone. And for that, Rayan Zar Davi had to die. But this woman … Stars and Fire, she prattled on. Itzpapalotl grew more annoyed as the woman described the unimportant details of the recent fighting far to the north. She had more pressing concerns than the inevitable military victories of the Aztalan Empire.
"I don't care about that," Itzpapalotl said, interrupting her, her voice a powerful hiss. "I should devour you for wasting my time."
The fear scent, the prey scent, wafted through the cavern, pleasing Itzpapalotl, and she shifted position, her scales grinding against the stones of the underground temple's surface. The other Tzitzime servants wisely drew back, as far from Itzpapalotl as they could get atop the wide stone surface of the temple of Zolin.
Itzpapalotl’s dark eyes narrowed on the woman before her, who was now shaking in fear. Her brother Tezcatlipoca had always believed fear ruined humans’ meat, made it too tough, but Itzpapalotl preferred her prey chewy. She liked it when, days later, her tongue would work free a morsel of tough flesh wedged between her teeth. Those morsels were always a special treat.
"Where are those who defiled my temple?" she demanded. "Where is the Haanal X’ib? Nothing else matters."
"We..." The woman's fear scent grew stronger, becoming near irresistible. "We have found their wrecked helicopter. They will never escape Baja California."
Itzpapalotl shifted one of her forelegs, and her clawed talons scraped across the temple's surface, scoring a groove in the stone. She sighed, her breath like a bellows. "It’s been three days now. I grow weary of your useless promises."
"They can't escape, Beautiful Mistress," said Tlaco. "Not on foot."
"Yet so far, they have."
Itzpapalotl curled her powerful wings tighter about her frame. Even with her wings wrapped about her, her beautiful body covered most of the temple's surface, leaving little room for her advisers: the woman briefing her, a handful of other cultists, and Aernyx, now pretending to be a young human man with pale white skin and long dark hair. Aernyx was so ordinary in appearance, humans often failed to see him until it was too late.
But that was an evolutionary design. Aernyx was as much a predator as she.
"And what of your children, Aernyx? Have you done as I asked, or do you disappoint me as well?"
The young man stepped forward. He wore a simple brown toga and was barefoot. Unlike the humans, he did not have the fear scent—he was wary; she could smell his cautiousness—but he wasn’t terrified of her. That was a mistake. But it wasn’t yet time to teach him the error of his ways.
That would come when she no longer needed him.
Aernyx inclined his head in respect—albeit not enough, never enough for her. The worm should grovel on his belly before her. "I have, Beautiful Mistress," he said in a quiet, calm voice designed to put others at ease. "Each military outpost within two hundred kilometers now contains one of my Night Kin. I will know what they know."
"Good," the dragon rumbled, steam hissing from nostrils a foot wide.
She wanted to punish those who had dared attack her temple, but she needed the female changeling back, the elven woman who wore a human face—Wyn Renna, she was named, the daughter of the elven queen Elenaril Cloudborn, which meant that Elenaril herself must have sent the intruders, the stupid elven cow. They had dared to assault the underground temple of Zolin, slaughtering her servants and stealing away the elven changeling. And they had lured her twin brother Tezcatlipoca out into the open, where he had been ambushed and killed by the feathered serpent, the coward Quetzalcoatl. But Itzpapalotl had avenged her brother, ripping the feathered serpent's craven head from his snakelike body. She should have been relieved.
She wasn't.
More than two thousand years ago, an Olmtec Seer—one blessed with the magic to see the future and known as the Golden Dawn—had predicted the blood of the Haanal X'ib, the female who was changed, held the power to undo the stone binding of the treacherous wyrms. That could only mean that Wyn Renna's blood would free Itzpapalotl's sire Memnog the World Eater, a being so powerful he was more akin to a god than a dragon. Memnog had been basely turned to stone by a cabal of other great dragons. But prophesy was a tricky matter, and the Golden Dawn's predictions had been originally recorded in ancient Olmtec and then translated into Mayan and Aztec. Mistakes became inevitable. Itzpapalotl herself had studied the translations, and she knew something even her twin brother hadn't: there was another part of the prophesy, one known only to Itzpapalotl—"the feathered serpent would forecast doom for the dark butterfly."
Quetzalcoatl might kill her.
There could be no other meaning. But Quetzalcoatl was dead at her own claws, so perhaps the translation had meant something subtly different, that Quetzalcoatl would doom the brother of the dark butterfly? Or perhaps it referred to the Jaguar Knight, the human champion of Quetzalcoatl who had also been rescued during the raid on the temple. Prophesy was maddening, but one thing was clear: Itzpapalotl was now the last dragon on Earth, the last of her kind. She had nothing to fear.
But the prophesy...
And there was another matter that bothered her. When her brother had pursued the fools who had attacked their temple, he had breathed fire on their aircraft. Dragon’s breath should have melted the aircraft to slag, but it hadn’t. Something had shielded the aircraft with magic. Her enemies were keeping a secret from her, and what she didn’t know might kill her. Her anger burned white hot. No. She would never die. She would devour her enemies and free her sire. And when Memnog the World Eater, the dragon god of destiny, was free, he’d reward Itzpapalotl with her own divinity: true immortality.