Hidden Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon Book 7)

back as she made her way across deck to Clarissa, whose mate, Nathaniel, had followed the others into battle, his amethyst scales glinting in the sun.
“How fast can you get us to shore?” Raven asked her sister.
“I’ll have you and Charlie on the island before that bitch can think her own name.” She turned in the direction of the sail, opened her mouth, and sang. A gust of wind filled the sail, powered by her voice. The boat jerked and picked up speed, careening toward the island and the dark figure between them and it.
Charlie’s whines turned into full cries. Raven tried her best to soothe the babe while keeping one eye on Gabriel and the pack of dragons that would collide with their mother at any moment. Avery swept in. “Here, give her to me. Maybe she wants her aunt Avery.”
Raven handed over the baby to her sister. “If we make it to shore, maybe the three of us can perform a spell together to knock that bitch out of the sky.”
Avery frowned, her eyes drawn back to the darkness under the water. “I don’t think the empress is the only thing we have to worry about.” Charlie cried harder in her arms. “That’s not a whale.”
Raven’s skin prickled as she watched the thing undulate under the surface, not far in front of the boat. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure, but I thought I saw… I mean, it looked like…”
“Spit it out, Avery!” Raven demanded.
In the distance, Gabriel and his mother collided and grappled in midair, his brothers and sister backing him up. Avery was distracted as Xavier’s claws sank deep into Ransom’s shoulders.
“Fuck,” Avery murmured. “The fight is on.”
Beside them, Clarissa stopped singing. The boat slowed. “Did you see that?”
Raven tore her eyes away from her mate to look at her oldest sister. “See what?”
“Tentacles. I think it has tentacles.” Clarissa’s face went chalky white, and she pointed toward the dark blob ahead of them. “I hate tentacles.”
Avery released a trepid moan. Charlie was positively inconsolable in her arms. “We’re almost on top of it. You don’t think that a Greek goddess’s island would be protected by a Greek monster, do you?”
Raven felt her eyes stretch wide. “Oh hell no—”
A monstrous tentacle drove straight up out of the water and slapped down across the deck of the ship between where Raven and her sisters stood and where Nick controlled the wheel. The creature’s suction cups clung to the wood and halted the ship’s progress. The ship groaned, threatening to come apart in the monster’s grip.
Nick swore. “It’s going to take us under!”
Above them, Maiara howled and released an arrow into the tentacle, but it had no effect. The thing had to be twenty yards long and three feet in diameter. How big was the monster it was attached to? In a blur, Sabrina rushed from the belly of the ship, tore the tentacle from the deck with vampire strength, and tossed it over the side. It took several chunks of wood with it, but they were freed. Nick banked hard to the left.
From under the hood of a dark cloak, Sabrina glared at Raven and her sisters as they all shifted their weight to counter the hard turn. “Okay, witches, time to fire up that three-sister’s magic. I don’t have the energy for much more in full light.”
Charlie screamed and pointed her chubby finger. The monster’s head and body rose from the water to their right as Nick desperately tried to steer around it. Raven resisted competing with Charlie for the loudest scream.
A round, bulbous head covered in stringy seaweed towered above them, or was that its hair? She didn’t plan to get close enough to find out. Three rows of eyes stared down at them from over a gaping maw sporting row after row of razor-sharp teeth. No discernible nose marred the face, but what appeared to be gills worked behind the open mouth. The chinless jaw melded into the torso. The rest of it disappeared beneath the surface and controlled a number of tentacles that now emerged all around them.
Maiara drew her bow and let arrow after arrow fly. Her aim was true. One sank directly into the thing’s eye. The monster roared.
“What’s she doing? She’s just pissing it off,” Avery yelled.
“I’ve got this!” Raven concentrated. Unfortunately, she’d sacrificed her emerald ring as an offering to the Goddess of the Mountain when she’d escaped Paragon months ago. Without it, she had nothing to focus her raw power. She took a deep breath and did her best without it, throwing the first spell she could think of at the thing. “Pagoma!”
An intense ripple of magic plowed into the beast. Even without her ring, Raven was well practiced with the petrification spell. The monster halted, frozen in the water.
“There, I—”
The monster lifted and thrashed the deck in retribution. The wood railing cracked, a piece breaking off and falling into the water. At this rate, it would either tear the ship apart or swallow it whole.
“I’m not strong enough!” Raven cried. “My magic won’t last.”
“It must be resistant,” Avery yelled. “Clarissa, try using the water around it rather than attacking it directly.”
“Leave it to me.” Clarissa opened her mouth, releasing a barrage of powerful notes.
A tower of ice erupted between the boat and the thing’s teeth. She kept singing, and the ice formed a dome around the creature, thickening, caging it in. The tentacles retreated. Behind the ice wall, the monster roared and thrashed against its enclosure.
Raven gripped Clarissa’s hand. She couldn’t keep this up forever. She was already running out of air. The note gave out, and Clarissa gasped for breath.
“Maybe it will hold!” Raven prayed it would, but it wasn’t to be. The ice shattered. The enraged creature thrashed itself free, reared, and reached for the ship again. A tentacle slapped the bow, sending pieces of wood flying. How were they even remaining afloat?
Avery handed Charlie back to Raven and drew her sword. “Raven, levitate me over