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recall...
    He shrieked as something flew past his head. Looking behind him, he saw Bracis
    coming for them.
    And with the sight, his human memories came flooding back.
    "Sebastian, help us. We 're trapped by the Slayers."
    "I can't, Percy. I can't leave Antiphone."
    "She's safe in the hills. We are in the open, unprotected. Please, Sebastian. I'm too
    young to die. Please don't let them kill me. I know you can beat them. Please,
    please help me."
    And so he had heeded the mental distress call and gone to protect his young cousin
    and brother, never knowing Percy's cry for help had been a trick, never knowing
    that Percy had deliberately summoned him from the cave.
    He'd found his cousin barely alive and learned too late they had forced Percy to call
    for him.
    By the time he'd returned to the cave where he'd left his sister hiding, the Slayers
    were gone.
    And so was his sister's life.
    Devastated on a level he'd never known existed, he'd refused to speak up in his
    own defense when his people had banished him.
    He'd offered no argument at all against Damos's insults.
    He should never have left Antiphone unprotected.
    Now he looked at the woman he held cradled in his palm.
    Channon.
    The Fates had entrusted this woman to him, just as his brother had entrusted
    Antiphone to him.
    He would not let Bracis have her. This time, he would see her safe. No matter what
    it cost him, she would live.
    Sebastian headed for the forest.
    Channon held her breath as they landed on the ground in a small clearing.
    "Hide." The word seemed to sizzle out of Sebastian's dragon mouth.
    She went without question, running into the trees and underbrush, looking for
    someplace safe. The forest was
    so thick that she quickly lost sight of the dragons. But she could hear them as they
    fought. She could feel the ground under her shake.
    Grateful for the green dress, she found a clump of bushes and crawled into them to
    wait and to pray.
    Sebastian circled around Bracis, enjoying the moment, en-joying the feel of the
    dragon blood coursing through his veins. For two hundred and fifty years he had
    dreamed of this moment. He had dreamed of drinking from the fount of vengeance.
    Now the moment was upon him.
    Bracis was the last of the Slayers left from that day. One by one, Sebastian had
    hunted them all down. He had hunted them through time and even space itself.
    "Are you ready to die?" Sebastian asked his opponent.
    Bracis attacked. Sebastian caught him with his teeth and clamped down on the
    Katagari's shoulder. He tasted the blood of the beast as Bracis shredded at his back
    with his claws.
    Sebastian barely felt it. But what he did feel was the fear inside Bracis. It swelled
    up with a pungent odor so foul that it made Sebastian laugh.
    "You may kill me," Bracis rasped. "But I'm taking you with me."
    Something stung Sebastian's shoulder. Snarling, he jerked his head around to see
    the dagger protruding from his back. But it wasn't the steel that stung; it was the
    poison that coated the blade. Dragon's Bane.
    Roaring from the pain of it, he turned back and finished Bracis off quickly by
    breaking his long, scaled neck.
    He stood over the body of his enemy, staring at it blankly. After all this time, he'd
    wanted more out of the kill. He'd expected it to release the agony in his heart, to
    relieve his guilt.
    It didn't.
    He felt nothing except disappointed by it. Cheated.
    No. In two hundred and fifty years only one thing had ever given him a moment's
    worth of peace.
    Suddenly, a scream tore through the woods.
    Channon.
    Sebastian reared up to his full twenty foot height, searching for her through the
    trees with his dragon sight and senses.
    He heard nothing more. His heart pounding, he ran for the woods where she'd
    vanished. With every step that closed the distance between them, all his feelings
    rushed through him. He relived every moment of Antiphone's death.
    The guilt, the fear, the raw agony.
    Under the onslaught of his human feelings, the