“Get Gabriel,” I gasped to Cyrene, wrapping my arms around myself as I struggled to control the power of the dragon within me.

“What?”

“Oh, man. That’s not good,” Jim said, studying me. “You’re going to do the nasty with Magoth, aren’t you? Right out here in the open where Gabriel can see? Wait! Let me get out my cell phone. Ash is going to want pictures of this. . . .”

Magoth looked startled for a moment, then slipped into his normal suave, seductive persona. “I knew the day would come when you gave in and—”

“Shut up,” I snarled, doubling over as I fought the transformation. “Cy, for the love of all that’s aquatic, get Gabriel!”

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded to know, marching over to me. Doubled up as I was, all I could see was her feet. “Is this an attempt at garnering some sympathy? Because if it is—”

Silver shimmered up my arms and legs, my back arching as my body lengthened and stretched into a shape that was not normal for a doppelganger.

Cyrene took two steps backwards, her hand to her mouth in surprise. “I’ll get Gabriel,” she said, still backing up.

I snarled something unintelligible at her as I spun around to face Magoth.

He watched me with pursed lips and a thoughtful expression. “You prefer to do it in dragon form, eh? I can’t say that I’ve indulged in that before, dragons being strangely averse to visiting Abaddon, but if you insist on it, I’m sure we can make it work.”

“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” Jim said, trying to hold a cell phone in its mouth and use one of its paws to take a picture of me. “This is great. I’m going to make millions off of this video.”

I flicked my tail at it, sending the cell phone arcing through the air into the dense undergrowth.

Jim’s lips formed an O of astonishment. “That was Aisling’s phone!”

I narrowed my eyes at the demon and breathed fire. “Do you want to follow it?”

“Hurry with Gabriel!” Jim bellowed after Cyrene, keeping its eyes fixed firmly on me. “May’s gone feral!”

Feral. The word resonated within me as I stretched, relishing the power to be had in this form. I was feral. I was dragon, and this place was mine.

Magoth shimmied forward toward me, his clothes dripping off him with each step until he stood before me stark naked. He put one hand on his hip and gave me a knowing look. “Shall we begin?”

I smiled, and sent a plume of fire onto his penis, which was waving jauntily at me.

Magoth’s jaw dropped for a moment.Then he grabbed my head with both hands and planted his mouth on mine.

“May!” Gabriel’s voice sounded distant and faint, as if he were at a great distance, not just a few hundred yards ahead.

“I don’t suppose you have a digital camera in your bag? I’ll just check, OK?” Jim said.

I let Magoth kiss me for a moment, the dragon shard analyzing the sensation. The differences in the shapes of our mouths made him less effective than I knew he was with a human, but it wasn’t that that ended up causing me to reject his advances.

It was the place. It was the land around us that called to me, not Magoth. I pushed him away just as Gabriel burst from a dense clump of ash trees, Savian hot on his heels. Kostya and Cyrene pulled up behind them, all four watching with startled expressions as my tail whipped out, catching Magoth in the midsection, flinging him a good thirty yards backwards until he smacked into a large tree.

“Wow, nice one. That’s gotta be at least a bronze medal for demon lord flinging,” Jim said, watching with interest as Magoth fell out of the tree to the ground.

“Thanks, but no, thanks,” I yelled to Magoth before turning my attention on Gabriel. The dragon shard hummed happily inside me at the sight of him, and I thought seriously for a moment of pouncing on him. I knew he would like that—it was a dragon mating game, and something told me that he would respond to it.

“Yes, I would, but that’s not what you want,” he said, reading my mind again.

I made a little pouty dragon face.

“My darling!” Magoth staggered into view, still naked, but now covered with dirt and lichen, with bits of tree clinging to his hair. “My sweet, powerful May! Your idea of foreplay is most pleasing to me. Do it again?”

I flicked my tail again, and he went flying, squealing with delight that was stopped only by the sound of his body smashing into yet another tree. He cooed gently to himself as he slid down the trunk.

“Silver medal. I think you should go for the gold,” Jim said.

“May, why have you shifted?” Gabriel asked, stroking his hand down the elongated curve of my neck.

I shivered at his touch and leaned my head into his chest, bathing him in a light sheen of fire. “I don’t know. Chase me?”

“What is going on?” Kostya asked, pushing between Savian and Gabriel to look at me.

I licked Gabriel’s neck.

“Oh, that’s what’s going on. Er . . .” Kostya glanced at Gabriel.

“No, this is not normal. May does not embrace the dragon within,” he answered the unasked question. “May?”

“I just felt like it,” I said, twining my tail around his leg. “It’s this place. It feels right here, like I’ve come home after a long, long journey. It feels like a place we should play.”

“Play?” Gabriel looked around us.

“What does she mean, play?” Cyrene asked, frowning at me. “May, honestly! Should you be sucking his ear like that in front of Magoth?”

“I’m fine! Don’t worry about me!” Magoth called from the distance. The only part of him visible was one hand waving out of a dense bank of ferns. “I think I’m in love.”

“Dragons use play as part of their mating,” Kostya explained as he, too, started examining the area around us.

“Really?” Cyrene transferred her frown to him. “You never play with me when we make love.”

“That’s different. You’re human.”

“I am not! I’m a naiad!”

“You look human,” he pointed out.

“Well, so does May. Most of the time.”

Magoth tottered toward us, dirt speckling the front of him, twigs now added to the leaves and lichen and moss that clung to his head, a small leafy shrub evidently stuck to his foot. His hands waved in the air as he approached. “Once more, my sweet—”