by Jada Fisher
I could see them, the stairs were almost in my sight. I picked up into a full sprint, heart in my chest, as I thundered down the hall.
But before I could reach the foot of them, the entire wall beside them exploded, showering me with splinters as Baelfyre erupted from it.
Except it was barely Baelfyre and almost entirely black dragon. His eyes were red, practically glowing at me with his furor. His snout was long with a row of sharp teeth. Horns were sprouting out of his head and down his spine, which I could see because he was on all fours. But his legs and arms were obscenely long, leaving him looking very much like an abomination of nature.
Maybe a curse word escaped from me, maybe it didn’t. I couldn’t quite tell. But I did turn on my heel and race back.
I could feel rather than hear him launch himself off the stairs toward me. I reached inside of me with all I had and called up a shield.
Somehow it worked, but it didn’t get much past me when he made contact. Once more, I found myself flung forward, picked right up off my feet and sent toward the wall at the opposite end of the corridor.
But as a positive, the hallway was too small for Baelfyre’s current form to get through, and that gave me an extra moment to recover.
I fought to my feet and dashed down the hall, ducking into the first room I came across. I knew that the manor only had a couple of servant quarters and that no one actually stayed there, that they had rooms on the first floor, but there had to be something useful to me. Could I loop back to the laundry room? Or would he know that I had been hiding in the hamper?
I didn’t know. And when I closed my eyes to try to sense something out, all I saw was flashes of claws and gnashing fangs.
The room I was in was just full of cleaning supplies. But I could work with that.
I groped blindly for what I was pretty sure was bleach, judging the shape of the bottle. Everything was so dark that there wasn’t much I could make out.
Hastily, I unscrewed the top, crouching as far as I could get in the corner.
I didn’t have to wait long. Large claws bit right into the wood on either side of the door and yanked it right off its hinges, revealing the snarling mess of a face of my hunter.
I didn’t waste a second. I threw the entire bottle of open bleach right at his gnashing teeth. And, better than I had even expected, it burst like an overripe grape.
Baelfyre let out a sound that would have been hilarious in any other context and hastily scrambled back, his mouth making all sorts of weird shapes. I dove forward, scrambling over his flailing limbs and taking off again.
I turned one corner, then another. I knew I had to be there soon. There was only so much space in the manor. I wished that I had checked back to see if the maid was up or still unconscious, but I had been so concerned with reaching the steps that I hadn’t thought twice about it.
“Hello! Who’s down there!?”
My stomach jolted as I heard a voice from not far away. Of course someone had to have heard us. Baelfyre was making so much noise, crashing in and out of entire walls. Surely the whole place had to be waking up.
That was good. The less alone I was, the more likely I was to survive.
“I’m calling the guard!”
Yes! Bless them! Bless them!
I switched directions and bolted right for them, putting my everything into a mad dash. I almost expected a trap, but sure enough, I saw one of the kitchen hands standing in a little t-junction in the hall, a knife in his hand and his jaw stretched out slightly.
“Lady Masters!” he said, eyes widening in surprise. “What are you—”
“Being chased!” I gasped, rushing to him. “Baelfyre has—”
Once more, before I could get a full sentence out, the dark dragon’s large arm burst through the wall, nearly slashing open my leg.
I screamed, stumbling to the side, and the kitchen worker let out a snarl.
“Run! I’ll hold him off as long as I can!”
“But—”
“Go! To the right and up the stairs. You’ll end up in the back of the kitchen. Towards the gardens.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I knew that would be stupid. There was no way a drake could take on a royal dragon, and I was pretty sure that was what the kitchen worker was.
So, I took off running down the hall. I could hear snarls and howls booming behind me, but I didn’t turn, didn’t glance over my shoulder.
I had to get out.
9
High-Speed Chase
Everything was going too fast.
My blood was rushing past my ears, my heart was thumping in my chest, the stairs were quickly racing towards me, and I swore that I heard voices above me.
Mickey and the others had to know that I was in trouble. They had to. Maybe I would burst out of the door at the top of the stairs and they would all be waiting there for me. The team all back together and I’d be a whole lot safer.
Except I didn’t really think I’d make it through that door. How many minutes had I been running from Baelfyre? Five? Maybe ten. It hadn’t been long at all, and yet to me it felt like I was in an entirely different day.
Somehow, I made it. My hand was on the knob and I threw it outward, stumbling into the back of the kitchen.
“Mickey!” I called out, shutting the door and rushing to grab one of the nearby chairs, pressing it up against the wood. But then I remembered how Baelfyre had burst through whole walls and realized how stupid that was.
Letting it drop, I ran out into the main part of the kitchen. Or at least where I thought it would be. I wasn’t very familiar with the back parts of the kitchen, which included the larder, the fridges, and the storage rooms. It wasn’t quite maze-like, but it wasn’t like there was just one door either.
I rushed through the first one I saw and definitely ended up in the larder. I did actually curse that time and went right out the door and then through another one.
…and I ended up in the gardens?
That was weird, but I would take it. I at least knew how to get out of there.
“Bronn!” I cried, hoping that somehow someone would hear me. But it was as if the entire manor was under some sort of thick blanket of hush, like a Sleeping Beauty level of oppression.
Wait… Was all of that a part of the elders’ plan? Would anybody be coming to save me? Was the only reason all of us were awake to cover mirrors because of my vision?
Well, that didn’t make sense. How would that drake and Allisandra have been up?
Those were all questions that could wait until later.
It didn’t take me long to get out of the garden, and I found the door that I knew would lead to a hallway that would in turn lead to the landing. I was almost there. Surely once I was inside, my friends would hear me and Baelfyre would finally flee. Sure, that wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but it was a whole lot better than me ending up gutted somewhere in the manor while everyone slept.
I thundered down the hall, breathless, but still calling out as loudly as I could.
“Mickey! Mal! Krisjian!”
I knew chances were unlikely that they could hear me, but I was sure that as soon as I got to the landing, they would be able to.
I stampeded into the lobby, all covered in sweat and feeling like I would be sick, but hope bloomed in my chest. Or at least it did until there was a rumbling, cracking sound and suddenly a huge plume of fire burst through the floor.
Oh…that was not good.
I stumbled back a step, my eyes so wide if felt like they might burst out of my head. As the fire burned, bright and hot and towering, a black clawed hand reached out. And then another. Then a great, many-horned dragon head came up as Baelfyre dragged himself up into the landing in this full dragon form.
But somehow, he seemed even bigger than normal, like he was full of so much magic that he was bursting at the seams, straining red flesh between rows of ebony scales. Maybe it was because I had never been so up close and personal with his draconia
n form, maybe it was because I was just so terrified. I called up my shield, imaging it as a bubble around me, but I should have thought twice about that, because when he surged forward, he was able to lock his jaws around my hazy barrier and launch himself into the air.
I let out a scream, forcing myself to concentrate. If I let it drop, I would be crushed by his jaws. The only thing I could do was hold onto my shield and try to expand it so I didn’t slip right down his throat.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I was swallowed outright. Would my shield protect me from the acid in his stomach? The incredible internal heat from his body? Would he… Would he just pass me as a shield bubble? That was so hilarious and disgusting.
If it were any other circumstance, maybe I would have chuckled. But then we were out into the night air and I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t just let him fly away with me. Take me to some remote location where he could eat me piece by piece. Everyone knew never to let themselves be taken to a secondary location.
So I reached inside of myself again, trying to grab my magic and rip it to me. I’d shielded a whole palace estate. I’d shielded a city. Surely, I could get myself out of a single dragon’s mouth.
For some reason, my mind went back to one time when I was younger—my parents, Mickey, and I all curled up on the couch to watch some kid’s channel movie that I was all excited for. I had been eating tortilla chips when one of them stabbed me right in the roof of my mouth. At the time, it was one of the most painful things that I had ever experienced. Although little Davie soon learned that wasn’t even a tenth of what pain really was, it still stuck out in my head.
I could probably be a bit of a tortilla chip.
Furrowing my brow, feeling the air around me becoming rapidly thinner and colder, I thought about harsh edges and sharp points. Thought about spikes and pinnacles and honestly, just a whole lot of discomfort.
And then, once I was sure I had the best mental image I could create, the clearest possible, I let all of my magic burst out in an emphatic wave.
I felt rather than saw it happen, bits of energy shooting out from me like a balloon filled with nails. Blood rained down over my shield as at least a couple of them stabbed right into the soft palate of his mouth, and I thought maybe one of them went down his throat. The next thing I knew, I was falling.
Wait.
It felt a bit like floating, except I wasn’t floating at all. I was rapidly descending toward the ground, hovering in the center of my shield.
Uh, I was going to hit with a whole lot of force. And while my shield would take the brunt of it, inertia was going to make sure that I slammed into my barrier not too long after that.
Which meant I was probably about to die.
Quickly, I tried to grab onto that magic again, to force it up under me and make a sort of slide. The most rushed, janky slide in existence but a slide, nonetheless.
If I’d had more time, maybe I would think about the comical nature of it all. I was basically in a sort of magical marble and was trying to rapid build a ramp so that I could bowl myself to safety.
The amazing thing was that it worked.
When I hit the top of my ramp, I hit hard, crashing right into the bottom of my bubble then being thrown to the top as it rotated. I was pretty sure my nose was bleeding, but that didn’t matter, or at least I tried to tell myself that as I scrambled to brace myself.
I picked up quite a lot of speed as I rolled, and I felt nausea completely take over a large part of my mind. So much so that I forgot I hadn’t quite finished my ramp all the way down to the ground, and suddenly, I wasn’t so much rolling as I was falling while spinning again.
And then I hit the ground and it was like it cracked in two, swallowing me into darkness.
10
Thrill Ride
Pain.
Pain swamped everything in a way that I wasn’t used to. I felt like I was going to puke, shrivel inside myself, and have my head burst all at the same time.
And I was also…moving?
Blearily, I tried to open my eyes. I got one most of the way there but the other was just a sliver and most of it was bathed in red. But I was indeed moving, in long, uneven slides across the earth. And I knew that because I could feel the wetness of dewy grass against my back, too cold to be blood.
Or at least I was pretty certain it was too cold to be blood. Everything was a little hazy.
I tilted my head ever-so-slightly, causing a fresh, nearly overwhelming burst of pain in my head, but I managed to stay conscious. Although what I saw almost made me wish I wasn’t awake at all.
Baelfyre was back in a form that was somewhere between human and dragon, one of his long, clawed arms gripping the back of my shirt as he dragged me across the ground. We were still on the manor grounds, I could tell that much, but we were somewhere I didn’t quite recognize.
So I couldn’t have been out for long. Minutes maybe? Otherwise he would have been long gone with my unconscious body or my corpse.
That corpse thing wasn’t exactly off the table by how hard my head was pounding. I was pretty sure that I had a concussion, and if I stayed on my back, I wasn’t entirely sure that I wouldn’t throw up and then drown in my own vomit.
Ugh. What a way to go.
The texture against my back changed, and I realized I was being dragged inside somewhere with a concrete floor. It grated against my skin, cold and unforgiving, and then I smelled the unmistakable scent of gasoline.
I was in the garage.
He was getting a car and was going to drive away with me. So… That meant he wasn’t trying to kill me. So, what then, he was trying to kidnap me? Again? Except this time, it was for real and not an elaborate trap that we had set up.
He went over to the cabinet where all the keys were held and removed one, then headed somewhere else. I wanted to move, to fight him, but even as I brought my hand up, I could only weakly swat at his grip. He was just so strong, and my head hurt so much.
I was gonna puke. I really was.
There was the little innocuous beep-beep of the car being unlocked then the passenger’s side door was being opened. It was like déjà vu, except a lot more painful, as he shifted his grip on me so he could shove me in.
“Let her go!”
I heard the collision of metal on scales, and I was suddenly dropped. The simple movement made my whole world shake like it was an etch-a-sketch, and my stomach practically twisted itself into a pretzel.
And yet I forced myself to roll. Force myself to move. I didn’t know what was going on, but I needed to take advantage of the opportunity I had been given.
I crawled forward on my arms and knees, like I was in the army or something, but an uneven part of the ground had me losing my balance and tumbling to the side. I ended up crashing into what smelled like a polishing rack, a couple of cans raining down around me.
I gagged so hard that the world blinked out again. When it cleared, I saw Mallory fighting Baelfyre armed with nothing but a crowbar.
…that was the last thing I had ever expected.
She was dressed in her pajamas, covered in sweat, with her hair still in the braids I had done for her. She was breathing hard, her arms shaking, but she was raining down blow after blow on all the human bits.
She’d clearly gotten the drop on him with a hit to the head as he’d tried to get me into the car, but he was rallying. I could see it as he fixed his stance and brought his arm up. And if he landed a good blow on her, I wasn’t sure she would survive.
I fought my way to my feet, ignoring the rush of pain, ignoring how the floor seemed to be tilting and buckling under me. I stumbled toward her, holding onto reality as tightly as I could.
He lashed out, his arm taking a blow from her crowbar as his teeth snapped forward. She managed to catch him by changing the angle of her weapon, but she had maybe seconds before he overpowered her and buried his teeth into her neck.
But he was distracted, and I used that
to my advantage, barreling forward and slamming into his body as hard as I could.
Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting that because he stumbled, crashing into the side of the car and lowering his guard enough for Mallory to crack his already very bloody face with her crowbar.
Unfortunately, I crumbled like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground hard and ending up pretty much in the same position I had started in, only dizzier and sicker.
Great.
“You need to run,” Mallory said, grabbing my arm and yanking me up.
“We both run,” I rasped, my voice sounding far too thin and reedy. I remembered back before I got involved with all these dragons and apocalypses that I used to think I was tough. A sort of confident, tall bruiser who protected the little folk.
But in reality, I was soft and weak and oh-so-vulnerable. If I didn’t have magic, I would have been dead several times over right now.
Actually, I’d been dead once, so that didn’t speak well of my track record.
“Davie, you’re half-dead. Get out of—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Baelfyre recovered from the hit and kicked her legs, sending her stumbling. Before I could think of how to counter it, he grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the trunk of the car.
She let out a groan and crumpled, blood clear on her brow. He lifted his massive, dragony foot like he was going to curb-stomp her.
“Stop it,” I cried, slamming my body into him once more. It was less effectual than the first time, but it still made him waver for a moment.
I, of course, fell right back down to the ground. But at least I managed to land by Mallory, and I rolled right onto her back.
Wrapping my arms around her, I dug my fingers into the last of my magic that I felt like I had a hold of and used it to surround the two of us, leaving maybe inches over my head as a cushion against any attacks.
