by Jadyn Chase
I indulged in a wry grin. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Here. Take this.”
I gave her another handgun—a revolver this time—and laid out three more shotguns. Then I unpacked four cartons of shotgun shells and two more cases of bullets.
I shoved a box of .44 caliber slugs into my back pocket. I fished an old Army pouch out of the closet and put two boxes of shells in that.
Piper gathered her long hair into a ponytail and twisted it into a knot. I could never figure out how girls did that sort of thing, but in a matter of seconds, she tucked it all into a neat bunch behind her head. Then she faced me with a different expression on her face.
I recognized again the woman who stitched me up last night. She braced her shoulders and leveled me with ferocious eyes. She stuck both her pistols into her waistband and grabbed her box of slugs.
She picked up a shotgun and racked the slide. “Is this one for me?”
I swallowed hard. What in the Christ did I get myself into with this one? “Yeah. It’s for you.”
She slung the weapon over her shoulder. She opened a box of shotgun shells and loaded them all into her jeans pockets. She took the other gun and hefted it in her hand. “I’m ready when you are.”
Yeah. She was ready. That’s what I was afraid of. She was ready, but I wasn’t sure if I was. I didn’t want to go out there, but this crazy mission was my idea.
I picked up my t-shirt, but when it came to putting it on, my shoulder hurt too much. I tossed it onto the bed. “Listen to me, baby.”
Her eyes drifted to my face. “What’s up?”
“I’m not going to be much good out there with one arm, so….”
“Don’t even suggest that,” she cut in. “We’re gonna make it. You’ll see.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head. “Will you please just listen to me for a second? This is important. The shit’s gonna hit the fan out there, and when it does, there’s only so much I can do with one arm.” I started talking faster when I saw her trying to interrupt. “I’m going to have to shift. That’s what I’m telling you. The Lynches will all come rushing in while in their dragon forms. The only way we can get through is if I shift. It’s the best chance we have. It’s the only chance we have, come to think of it. You have to be ready for that. You have to prepare yourself mentally for me to shift. You have to remember that I’m not your enemy. Can you do that?”
She blinked. A cloud crossed her face. Then she shook her head back even though her hair wasn’t in her eyes. “You’re a dragon.”
“Yeah. I’m a dragon. Can you handle that?”
“If you’re a dragon,” she asked, “why don’t you just fly us up the Ridge?”
I closed my eyes and blew out a long breath. “Are you listening to a word I’m saying? They’ll attack as soon as we show ourselves. They would all attack at once if I tried to fly there. The Jeep is our best bet.”
She scrutinized me for a long moment. I couldn’t read her reaction. What if we went through all that insane love-making last night and she balked, now that she had no choice but to accept what I really was? What if she could accept me as a man but not as a dragon? What did it all mean if she couldn’t accept me?
I couldn’t deny to myself now that I loved her. I wanted her in my life. I didn’t want to let her go back to Charlotte. I didn’t even want her working as a biologist. I wanted her here, in my bed, in my arms, in my dreams.
She wouldn’t do that, though, if she couldn’t accept me as a dragon. She had to be able to look at me and see me in my dragon form without freaking out. As a matter of fact, she had to be able to do the same thing with all the Kellys. She didn’t belong on Smokey Ridge—not for a single hour—if she couldn’t do that.
She took a firm grip on her shotgun. “I can handle it.”
She turned her back on me and walked to the doorway. She stopped there and stared out at the woods. I could believe she could handle it. She could handle anything. She could handle seeing me in my dragon form. She could even handle fighting the Lynches in theirs. Whether she would still want to love me and sleep with me and spread her legs for me after the fact—that was a matter for another day.
I took a deep breath and stuck two handguns into my jeans. I draped the strap of one shotgun across my chest. I took hold of the other in one hand. I already felt crippled holding a shotgun in one hand and the enemy wasn’t even in sight. How did I get into this mess? I should be the one defending Piper, not the other way around.
I approached her from behind and looked out over her shoulder. A long silence followed. We both searched the woods for something unseen. At that moment, for the first time, the togetherness that became real in that bed extended outward to the rest of the world.
We were together. We were one and the same. We were joined for good or ill. Now we would face a dangerous enemy bent on destroying us and the bond we forged last night.
My anxiety disappeared. I was going out there to defend us—me and Piper. She was doing the same thing. Nothing would stop us breaking through so we could be together. This fight boiled down to that and that alone.
She glanced up at me and a curious smile lit up her face. In spite of the odds, she knew what this was all about and she was ready. She welcomed it. She didn’t worry about it. She wanted to go out there and fight for it.
I nodded down at her. The next instant, we both burst out of the cottage running for all we were worth. We broke across the yard to the Jeep. Piper raced to the driver’s side and hopped into the seat. She rested her gun against the passenger’s seat and seized the keys.
I climbed into the passenger’s side, but I didn’t sit down. I braced my legs standing on the seat and got my shotgun into position on the frame above the windshield. “Drive!”
She fired up the engine and hit the gas. I locked my knees to steady myself, but I kept my gun trained on the woods all around. Any second now, the Lynches would get wise to what we were doing. Then all hell would break loose.
Piper skidded in reverse to whip the Jeep around. She threw the Jeep into drive and slammed her foot to the floor. The vehicle screamed through the gravel to the road and she burned rubber out of Whistler’s Gulch. She drove so fast she plowed around corners. I had to fight to stay upright from the G-forces pulling me to either side.
She got to the main road. She yanked the wheel heading for the Ridge when it happened. A deep rumble vibrated my bones so low I couldn’t hear it. I felt it, though, and my blood ran cold. I looked over my shoulder, but I still didn’t see anything behind us.
I spun around and laid my gun barrel on the roll bar. Piper trained all her focus on the road ahead. She clenched the wheel in a white-knuckle grip and slammed the gear shift into place. She drove like a bat out of hell, but even that speed made me uneasy. I wanted to get up the Ridge before they found us, but there was no way we could make it in time.
Another low grumble drifted to my ear over the engine noise. I whipped my shotgun up and supported the barrel on my elbow. My shoulder hurt like a bastard, but I paid it no mind. If I was going to get into a shooting match with some dragon on a lonely road off Smokey Ridge, I had to be able to shoot straight.
Piper came to a hill and smashed the gearshift down into second. She popped the clutch, and at that moment, the canopy parted. A shaft of blue sky shone down on me. The next instant, a gargantuan red form blocked out the light. A heaving crimson dragon stomped through the foliage, destroying trees in his path.
“Here they come!” I bellowed.
Piper yelled something back, but I didn’t hear her. I raised my shotgun and fired three times in rapid succession. The shots deflected off the dragon’s scales exactly the way I knew it would. At best, guns could only delay the inevitable.
The dragon narrowed its eyes on us—on me. It lowered its head and its nostrils flared. It arched its neck to move its head closer to us, and it bared its hideous fangs. I took aim and blasted away my last two shells. My shotgun was empty, but I didn’t dare tak
e the time to reload.
The Earth trembled when the creature stormed onto the road behind us. His massive body splintered branches overhanging his path. Wood and leaves clouded the air, but he paid no heed. He stalked closer no matter how fast Piper drove.
She cast a terrified glance over her shoulder and spun back the other way. The engine screamed in place of the horror and desperation crushing my ribcage. I couldn’t breathe with that thing coming closer all the time. My instincts told me to shift—shift now.
The dragon picked up its pace to overtake us. In a few more steps, it would come within striking distance. One chomp and it would split the Jeep in half. Then Piper and I would be on foot—if we lived to tell the tale.
I yanked out my .44 and aimed it at the thing. I squeezed off three rounds. They glanced off the creature’s bony skull. Sparks winked against the monster’s skin and petered out to nothing.
I had to think of something. I had to find a way to defeat this thing. I had to keep us driving in the Jeep as long as we could to get us closer to the Ridge. The longer I could keep this up, the quicker we would get there.
That was all a folly and I knew it. We would never get there driving. The Lynches wouldn’t allow it. They would attack en masse any second now and we would be done for.
In answer to my thoughts, the dragon lunged for the Jeep. It gave a devastating snap of its jaws. At the same instant, Piper jerked the wheel sideways. The Jeep slithered in the gravel and peeled around a corner going full speed, and the dragon bit down on empty air.
We couldn’t hope to get away with that for long, though. Sure enough, as soon as she got around the corner, the dragon made another rush to bite at us. I raised my gun knowing it was useless against one of these creatures.
Then I remembered last night. Piper. She knew how to kill one of these monsters. I steadied my hand and squinted down the barrel. The dragon moved into position for another assault. It uncoiled its neck and opened its mouth.
Its great jaws rushed in on me glistening with death, and I fired. Instead of ricocheting off the creature’s scales, the bullet found its right eye and popped the gelatinous orb in a sickening crater of goo. The eye ruptured and the demon whipped its head back shrieking in fury.
Piper screamed, but when I looked down, I saw she wasn’t even looking. The noise itself terrified her, but she kept the Jeep moving. The dragon reared on its hind legs. Its neck thrashed against the sky, and its huge form receded into the distance.
In an instant, three more dragons swept out of the sky behind their comrade. Their leathery wings pumped the air and they stooped to intercept the Jeep. I swallowed, but a lump stuck in my parched throat. This was going to get dicey. I knew that before, but staring down three more dragons zooming in to take their brother’s place didn’t inspire much confidence.
I took advantage of the lull to reload my shotgun, but I didn’t raise it. I crammed a few more cartridges into my .44 clip just so I would be fully loaded, but I promised myself I wouldn’t fire again until I knew I had a shot that would do some real damage. Piper taught me that. The dragons might have armor plate to deflect bullets, but they still possessed a few key vulnerabilities. No one knew them better than I did.
Piper whizzed around another corner and shrieked up at me. “Where is it?”
I cast a quick glimpse over my shoulder and saw what she meant. She made it to the main road outside the Ridge, but she didn’t know the turn-off to get up on top. She’d never been there before.
“Another mile,” I yelled down. “You’ll see a fallen tree on your left. Then a right at the fork and it’s your first right after that.”
One of the dragons rocketed in and unleashed a spray of fire. It narrowly missed the Jeep and hit the trees lining the road. The woods erupted in flame before Piper motored past. I swung up my shotgun and crooked it in my elbow to take aim.
I waited until the dragon swooped over our heads to make another pass. I compressed the trigger and the gun slammed into my shoulder. Shot sprayed the dragon as it flew past my head and punctured the soft tissue under its wing. The skin parted.
The dragon screeched in agony. It craned its head around and pierced me to the marrow with gleaming red eyes before it flew up and away. It banked, but its injured wing wouldn’t obey it. It missed its trajectory and smashed into the dense canopy.
I didn’t have time to celebrate my second victory before the other two dragons raced in for the attack. This is how it would go down. The more I succeeded, the more of these devils I killed, the more would attack until they all piled in at once to destroy us.
In spite of my pulse hammering in my ears and cold sweat breaking out across my back, I chose my next target with care. I had to reserve my ammo and make every shot count.
12
Wyatt
The two dragons stooped at the same moment and came streaking in behind the Jeep. They careened within inches of the ground right behind us. They dodged right and left no matter which way the road turned. They dogged our tail, and when I leveled my shotgun at them, they veered from side to side. I couldn’t get a decent bead on either of them.
“There it is!” Piper called.
I didn’t dare turn around. I prayed to High Heaven she found the right turn-off or we could be in serious shit out here. She hit the clutch to shift gears. At that moment, the two dragons whizzed together behind the Jeep. They angled in shoulder to shoulder right in my line of sight.
Come on, you suckers, I thought. Come to Papa and eat lead.
I tightened my grip on the trigger and took aim at their eyes. Before I could fire, they both unloaded their fire on the Jeep at the same moment. They cracked their jaws apart and a roar of flaming hell poured out. It hit the back of the Jeep.
I saw the whole thing unfold in slow motion. The Jeep’s tail end flipped up. I grabbed the roll bar and sailed into the air. Only my hand stopped me from launching into the wild blue yonder.
Piper screamed again. The impact shot her out of her seat. The seat belt tore at her shirt. The next minute, the forward momentum yanked her free of it and she went flying over the windshield. I lost sight of her before the fire caught the undercarriage of the Jeep. The gas tank exploded, and the vehicle somersaulted off the ground.
I lost my hold on the roll bar and my shotgun. In a daze, I floated high into the air. The two dragons rocketed underneath me flying a mile a minute. I watched in a kind of trance as trees and sky and bushes floated past my eyes. I hovered in the sky for a minute.
The next thing I knew, I smashed into the ground on my injured shoulder. Pain obliterated everything else and I passed out. Heavenly black blocked out all the pain and confusion and fear.
I blinked, and it all crashed down on my head with devastating power. My body rocked with pain. I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I prayed for death, but something made me stay.
Out of the distance, I became aware of hands pulling at me. I couldn’t decipher where they were coming from. I only knew they wanted to rob me of that blissful unconsciousness where I could take refuge from all this pain. They drew me back to life, the life I wanted to escape.
“Get up, Wyatt!” someone called. “You have to get up.”
I kept my eyes closed and try to tell the person to leave me alone, but I only groaned instead.
Something sharp jabbed me in the ribs. I flinched and whined in agony. “Get up, Wyatt!” The voice rose to a commanding roar. Lips brushed my ear and thundered down into my brain. “I said get up, Wyatt! Get up right now, damn it, or I swear I’ll throttle you.”
My chest hurt. A power greater than the living universe hauled me to my feet. I gasped out loud and my eyes snapped open. I was standing up with Piper holding me around the waist. She shoved her pointy shoulder bone into my armpit to prop me up, and blood stained her face and shirt. Was that my blood or hers?
She balanced a shotgun in her other hand. “Come on,” she rasped. “We have to get moving before they come back.”
&n
bsp; She staggered forward. I struggled to put the pieces back together before I remembered where we were. We were on the long, curved driveway leading up Smokey Ridge, but I didn’t tell her we still had at least a mile and a half to go to the homestead.
She lurched a few steps and I almost passed out from the pain. This time, though, I concentrated all my energy on staying conscious. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t take refuge in that void again. Piper needed me. I couldn’t let her down.
I did my best to stay upright for her sake. She kept glancing right and left and over her shoulder for any sign of the dragons. In the effort of moving, I felt the two handguns in my waistband. I still had one more shotgun over my shoulder, too, but I wouldn’t use them again. If the dragons came back, only one force on God’s green Earth would stop them and it wasn’t any gun.
Piper might not know that, though—not yet. I didn’t tell her. The longer she went without seeing me in dragon form, the better.
We made it seven paces before the roof caved in. I almost lost my lunch when the first grotesque behemoth broke the canopy to land on the road in front of us. Before I could react, Piper swung up her shotgun and blasted the thing in the face.
The shot scattered across his cheeks and sprayed to the four directions, but it slowed him down enough for Piper to drag me another few yards. She marched straight toward the dragon without flinching. She wheezed for breath under my weight, but I couldn’t support myself, much as I tried.
She let her gun dangle at her side while she walked. The dragon whipped around to bellow at her. The instant he presented his face to her, she flipped up her gun again and fired. She bombarded the creature four times in rapid succession until he retreated a few steps up the road.
I couldn’t fathom her strategy except that she intended to make a serious dent in these things before she went down. I applauded her spirit, but I couldn’t help her injured the way I was. Just staying upright and moving forward cost me everything I had.
