by Jada Fisher
That was a whole lot to swallow.
“There,” I said, sharing the image with him. “That’s where our weapons are.”
If he felt any of my emotions or was even aware that I was waist deep in his, he didn’t give any indication. Instead, he just tucked his wings in and let himself dive.
I held on with everything I had, trying to extricate myself from his emotions without severing the connection that let me guide him. But it seemed that I couldn’t separate the two, so I was stuck dwelling in the complex waves of everything he felt as we raced through the sky.
I never thought I would be grateful for another dragon attacking us, but I definitely was as two shot up in front of us, ash falling from their hides. One was a brilliant, iridescent green while the other was pitch black. It struck me as a bit odd that there were no physical differences between the anti-humanists and Bronn’s people. It was just ideology splitting them apart.
Maybe dragons and humans weren’t that different.
Ugh, that was a depressing thought.
But those dark ideas quickly fled as I felt another flood of Bronn’s emotions. There was such a pressing need to protect that my own blood picked up in my veins, bolstered by the red-hot rage that followed it.
Whoa, for being such a reasonable guy, Bronn sure felt a lot and in brilliant technicolor.
“You wanna go easy there?” Mickey gasped from behind me. “I’m feeling that echo.”
Oh. Right. That made sense. I was tapping into Mickey’s gift, which meant I got her ability to ‘read’ people, as she said. I’d had no idea that meant basically becoming a full-on empath. It was exhausting. I didn’t know how she lived with it.
Then again, it very much explained why she preferred to stick around the house.
“Sorry,” I murmured, trying to relax my mental grip on her energy. But the moment I did, the image in front of me began to waver, almost blinking out entirely.
“Great,” Mickey muttered. “Just do what you gotta do.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Krisjian added from the back.
But I didn’t have a chance to reply as Bronn barrel-rolled to the side, kicking away one dragon with his hind legs and sinking his teeth into the wings of the other. Its shrill shriek filled the air as it tried to get away, but Bronn had a solid hold on it, which he used to rattle it like a maraca.
It was morbid and awe-inspiring to watch, but it didn’t stop me from noticing that the dragon he had kicked had circled and was coming up from his left side fast.
“Bronn!” I cried.
Somehow, he seemed to know exactly what I meant and gave the smaller dragon one final shake before wheeling to the side, ending up right next to the attacking dragon.
Clearly his adversary had not been expecting as much and balked for a moment. It recovered quickly, however, and turned on its side to claw at Bronn.
Bronn did the same, of course, turning us horizontal. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable feeling, but I had faith in my thighs’ gripping power to keep me grounded.
But still… I wanted to help. Bronn had to be exhausted, and there was still a bit to go to that glowing blue. I didn’t like just sitting there, watching him fight for us, so I looked around for anything that I could use.
Granted, that was much easier said than done considering how fast we were going on the back of a brawling dragon prince.
Things whipped by us, damaged buildings and mangled highway signs, until I finally saw something I might be able to grab. Squeezing as tight as I could with my legs, I called back to my companions.
“Hey, guys? Do me a favor and hold onto me real good.”
“Davie? What are you going to do?”
“Something stupid,” I answered with a grin that my sister couldn’t see before reaching out and grabbing the jagged piece of signage that was half stuck into a telephone post that had somehow ended up halfway hanging off a building.
“Ow!” I hissed as I felt the thing slice into my hand, cutting into the sensitive flesh under my burn scars, but I managed to keep a solid grip on it and pulled my arm back with my prize.
“Davie, you’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, that can wait until later. You should let go of me now.”
“What? Why? What are you doing?”
“Something even dumber.”
Turning as much as I could, I found two hand holds in Bronn’s scales before I released my legs. My body instantly jerked out from under me, and if it weren’t for Krisjian and Mickey both grabbing my shirt, I was pretty sure I would have lost my grip entirely.
“Thanks,” I managed weakly, scuttling further until I was completely on Bronn’s side.
“What the heck, Davie!”
I snickered at that but kept going, pulling myself despite the wind resistance, despite the turbulence, until I was right at the level of the other dragon’s front legs. It took a bit of wiggling, but I managed to get it so my feet were tucked under me, pushing me into a shaky sort of crouch.
“Davie, I swear to God, you better not be doing what I think you’re about to do.”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome this is going to be,” I shot back before moving the jagged piece of metal close enough to my mouth for me to bite it. I could feel it bite into my cheeks, but I ignored that for later. A lot of things were being put on my later tab.
I breathed in. Out. In again, then put everything I had into my leg muscles launching me forward. For a split-second, I hovered in the air, feeling like I was completely still while the dragons rushed away from me, but then that second was over, and I was falling.
Just like I figured, I connected with the attacking dragon much lower on his body. What I didn’t expect was to completely bounce off his side and go rolling down the bucking length of him. I almost gasped, but belatedly reminded myself that my teeth needed to stay locked around my weapon.
Oh, and also not fall from the dragon and die.
I kept sliding and bouncing, moving almost too fast to see, but I reached out at the last moment and managed to grab one of the spines at the base of the dragon’s back. It stopped me short, nearly jerking my shoulder out of its socket, and it took so much willpower not to cry out in agony.
What I didn’t count on, however, was the blood from my cut making my hand so slick that I couldn’t keep my grip. With a jolt of surprise, I was sent hurtling downward again.
I tried to reach for another spine, but the stupid dragon’s tail was devoid of them, and I couldn’t get a grip on the smooth scale. But just when I thought my plan was about to go belly up, Bronn’s tail snapped up, slamming into my spine and knocking me all the way up the other dragon’s back.
Ow.
I landed hard, but I landed between two scale ridges and was able to hold on. I allowed myself a solid second to catch my breath, then started climbing toward the creature’s head.
Finally, the thing noticed me and tried to shake me off. Bronn seemed onto my plan, however, and lashed his jaw forward, nearly locking his teeth right over our enemy’s muzzle. Its attention recaptured, it forgot about me and let me keep wiggling up its body.
The entire business only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like so much more. Like days could have come and gone, my muscles screaming with effort, all while I climbed up a stupid dragon’s neck and to the crown of its head.
I was finally there. The last hurtle. With a bit of a grunt, I pulled my body up enough so I could wrap my legs around one of its curled horns and then let my upper body drop down over the side of its face.
It did jerk in surprise at that, but it was too late. I took the piece of metal out of my mouth and couldn’t resist at least one cheeky remark.
“Hello,” I said, letting my arm hang down in a little wave before I stabbed the piece of metal right into its eye.
In all my time being around dragons, and the couple of intense fights I had been in, I’d never heard one of them scream. Not roar, not shriek, just outright
scream. It was definitely an experience, and I covered my ears as we spun wildly out of control.
The world was a kaleidoscope for a moment, making my stomach protest, and the creature’s swiping paws only barely missed me. One of its claws just glanced my right thigh and left a thick line of red there. Oh, and also ruined one of my favorite pair of leggings.
Rude.
I knew I couldn’t stay on. The dragon was going to find me sooner rather than later probably, and I didn’t want to be in its clutches when it did. So, the moment it was upright, I pulled myself back up into a sitting position then eventually into a crouch, then launched myself upwards.
And I had faith.
Once more, I was caught up in the feeling of hovering, of being free and weightless and worry-free. But as the seconds ticked by with me still falling, the slightest bit of doubt started to creep in.
“Davie!”
Ah, there it was.
Clawed feet wrapped around me and then I was spinning away from the still-thrashing dragon. I sagged in relief in Bronn’s hold, my body suddenly reminding me of all the little bumps and bruises that my little plan had earned me.
I, uh, I definitely was hurting.
Like a lot, actually.
But that had to go on the later tab too, because when I looked at the view again, we were almost to the dazzling blue.
Right, the journey so far had just been to get to the weapons. There were still several dozen evil dragons that had to be dealt with. And that wasn’t counting any drakes or wargs on the ground.
I shuddered at the thought of hundreds of the four-legged beasts attacking people in their homes. Sure, while drakes were wingless and smaller than their dragon counterparts, they still had sharp, sharp teeth and were roughly the size of horses. Oh, and could also breathe fire. It wouldn’t take many of them to wipe out entire communities.
I hoped I wasn’t too late.
Bronn was just beginning to set down when there was a whistling through the air, and a massive harpoon went flying past us. Finally, I was pretty sure that I had officially seen everything.
“Uh, Bronn?” I called up. “I don’t think they know you’re friendly.”
“I think I have this,” Krisjian shouted down to me tentatively. “I can feel them. They’re in there.”
“They who?”
He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could feel it as what little power he had left trickled out, feeling its way through the air and curling around the people inside.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but whatever it was let Bronn set me down in peace and then land. The three of us ran in front of him, our arms raised to show we meant no harm.
Or at least we did until the doors of the building opened and several haggard, very short adults stepped out.
I could feel Krisjian’s energy swirling around them, and it reminded me strangely of a megaphone, but that didn’t quite make sense. Or at least it didn’t, until the woman’s eyes went wide at the sight of us.
“You! I knew you would do this! Look what you’ve done!” Her tone was high and panicked, like she was seeing death itself instead of just little ol’ me. And that was when a few things clicked. While Krisjian couldn’t see the past and future quite like me, and while he wasn’t able to read people like Mickey, he seemed to be able to bring out the best and the absolute worst in people, to amplify the good, or hold up a magnifying glass to the bad.
And since it was none other than Estelle right in front of me, she had a whole lot of bad to be magnified.
“I’m saving you,” I hissed, striding forward. She braced, looking like she was about to strike me, but I didn’t care. I wanted her to hit me. Because if she did, that would excuse me taking time away from a very important battle to beat the absolute crap out of her.
Although I’d always been one for fighting, I usually wasn’t so violent. But maybe Krisjian was bringing out the worst in me too.
Or maybe, at my core, this was always what I was.
“Who is this, Estelle?” a dark-haired man asked from beside her. He was armed with both a sword and what looked like a rocket launcher. Wow, was I glad he hadn’t used it on us. “Is she the one who made the shield?”
“You can see it?” I asked. That was going to make explaining everything a whole lot easier.
He nodded. “Dwarves are pretty good with structured magic like that. What you did was impressive.”
“Aw, thanks. It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“You’re the one who brought the dragons on us!” Estelle spat. “So like your kind, to come rushing in like a hero to help end the messes you caused! Do you know how many people are dead now because of you?”
I marched right up to her, looking down at her spiteful, hateful face. “I have only saved people, which is more than I can say for you. Tell me, did you stick around to listen to my parents scream? To make sure that you did your job right? Or did you hightail it like Mavis and Jacoby?”
The dark-skinned man beside her tried to sidle in between us, but suddenly, Krisjian was beside me, blocking his path. “What is she talking about, Estelle?”
“Nothing!” the woman answered shrilly. “You can’t trust a seer! They’ll say whatever they need to in order to get what they want!”
Krisjian reached out, his hand stroking the woman’s cheek. I could see the shimmer of his gift along her skin before it sank in and her breath caught. “Don’t you think you should take responsibility for what you’ve done?”
Another person stepped forward, her dark hair cut short and an axe in each hand. Maybe it was a bit stereotypical of me, but that was more of what I expected from a dwarf.
“What are they talking about? What is going on? This is one of our ally dragons, is it not? He looks familiar.”
“Ah yes, this is Bronn, the prince of his kind,” I said, gesturing back at the man. Err…dragon. He was facing away from us, his eye trained on the sky and perimeter around us. “And your friend here trapped me and my parents in our home and tried to burn us all to death. And that was just the beginning, apparently. I know of at least a handful of other incidents and I can probably find out more.”
It was pretty satisfying to see all their eyes widen and looks of horror cross their faces.
“That can’t be true!”
“Estelle, that’s a mistake, right? She’s wrong?”
There were a couple more murmurs from the people surrounding us, but Estelle just stood there, sweating profusely and shaking.
“Come now,” Krisjian soothed, his accent like honey over his words. “Wouldn’t it be nice to tell the truth?”
“The truth?” she repeated, her voice trembling. “The truth is I was willing to do what so many of you were not! You can stand there, and you can judge me, but look around us! This was exactly the thing I was trying to avoid!” She pointed to me shakily. “If it weren’t for those weaklings Mavis and Jacoby, you would be dead right now and everyone else would be alive! You should have burned that night along with your mix-blood parents! They weren’t even fey! They were humans who both happened to have just the right type of recessive genes. That’s it!”
There was a lot of things I could tolerate, but that wasn’t one of them. I closed the last distance between us and socked the woman right in the jaw. She stumbled back a moment, recovering enough to round her weapon on me, but then both dwarves at her side caught her arms, holding her there.
“What? Let me go! At least let me finish this now!”
“You’re not finishing anything,” Mickey said, coming up alongside me and slapping the woman on the other side of her face. Sure, it wasn’t very turn the other cheek, but considering all she had done to hurt us, I admired our restraint.
“We know our words can never mean enough,” the darker dwarf said. “But please understand that we didn’t know. Truly, we didn’t. We would never approve of such evil tactics.”
“Yeah, I get that impression,” I sa
id with a bit of a crooked grin. “But if you want to make it up to me, how do you folks feel about sparing some weapons and maybe riding some dragons?”
“Dragons?” the second one asked.
“Yeah, three of them, a wyvern, and a handful of drakes are in here and on our side. The numbers are a little unbalanced, so any help you would want to give would be really nice.”
The two looked to each other uncertainly. “Someone needs to stay here with the humans, protect them while we’re gone.”
“I’ll do it,” the smallest said from just behind the door. She was about Mallory’s size, with bright blonde hair and deep wrinkles across her face. She could have been a grandmother, but something about the way she held herself told me never to underestimate her. “I’m not much of one for heights anyways.”
“You sure, Marilyn?”
She nodded. “We’ve been hiding in plain sight for a while, and something tells me this is the end of it. It would be good to have plenty of humans on our side.”
“Fair enough.”
The male dwarf looked to me with a nod. “We’ll get you the weapons and return shortly.”
“And what of this woman?” Krisjian asked, his gaze about level with hers.
“We’ll lock her in one of the supply rooms for now. She can be dealt with after this…fiasco.”
“That’s one thing to call it,” I said, trying to laugh but it came out more like a snarl. “Just make sure it’s appropriate.”
“Oh, we will.”
“Wait, that’s it?” Krisjian asked, sounding alarmed. “You’re just going to let her go?”
I raised my eyebrow, surprised at his objection. “Uh, I did just punch her in the face and expose her to all her friends.”
“That’s not enough! She murdered your family! She took everything from you!”
I really hadn’t expected the vehemence in his tone, and I let him push past me. It was like everything was moving in slow motion as both of his hands landed on either side of her head, holding her firmly.
