Witch's Reign

by Shannon Mayer

  “Go flounce yourself,” the little dragon—Lila, I assumed—snapped. She spun in a circle, her minuscule teeth flashing. One of the other dragons tipped his head back and laughed.

  “You ain’t even got a good amount of poison, runt, barely enough to kill a bug. What are you going to do, nip at my toes?”

  She was a sap sucker? She was all the wrong colors. But I didn’t doubt them. They would know what she was capable of, not me. I did not need any of that venom on my skin. I crinkled up my nose and took a step back, my eyes still on them as I put distance between us.

  Meddling in the affairs of dragons was not smart. Not if you liked the placement of your head on your shoulders as it was. The little dragon would have to fight her way out to show her worth. I knew the feeling, trying to prove yourself when you were the smallest kid on the block. But it would make her stronger and I wouldn’t take that from her. Being the smallest meant you had to fight harder, meaner, and smarter.

  “Just kill her already,” the biggest of the three dragons said, the one with the wings.

  “Ahh, but I want to have some fun first. They didn’t say we couldn’t play with her. I want to pull her wings off and see if she looks like a snake with legs.”

  My feet stopped moving and a ripple of chills slid down my spine. Lila spun and launched into the air, but was batted down before she rose more than a few feet. I felt the snarl rolling up my throat and I couldn’t stop it. The desire to protect those who needed defending was as ingrained in me as my ability to shift. I might only be a house cat in form, but the lion in me didn’t like odds stacked like this.

  Damn it.

  Part of my brain tried to stop me, told me I was an idiot, that there was no way I could save her. But I had to try.

  That much of my father’s teachings had stayed with me.

  Protect the innocent, save the children, you are the last line of defense.

  The dragon with wings was closest and had his back to me. Funny enough, there was no hesitation for me this time. I went for him first. If I could distract them, maybe she could get away. I’d slip into the forest and that would be that. Over and done before anyone even knew I was there.

  I raced across the snow, belly low and eyes locked on my target. At the last second, I jumped up and landed between his shoulder blades where I was fairly certain he wouldn’t be able to reach me. I dug in my claws, cutting through the thick armored hide with an ease that shocked me. I’d never actually tried to fight anything bigger than me in this form. What would be the point? But here I was actually doing damage!

  There was a moment of silence and then he roared and tried to whip his head around, his tooth-filled mouth snapping. But I was too far up and he wasn’t flexible enough. Score one for the kitty cat.

  “What the fuck is that on your back?” One of the Grasslander dragons laughed at him. “You’ve got a fuzzy black growth! A snarling tumor!”

  They came toward us, laughing, while I clung to his back and he bucked and fought to dislodge me.

  “You shouldn’t pick on those smaller than you,” I snarled. “Some of us have claws and teeth.”

  “You . . . pussy cat, I’m going to peel your hide from your bones!” He flicked his wings out wide and the muscles under him bunched. There was no way I was going to fly with him.

  I might have been stupid to think I could take him on, but I was not so stupid as to let him get me in the air.

  Right before he launched skyward, I twisted and let go, leaping for one of his buddies. I caught him on the side of his neck and once more dug my claws in. I was lower this time, closer to his chest, and he flung himself backward as my claws cut deeply into his hide. This was insane. How was this even happening? A strange sense of glee filled me and I bit him, tearing away a tiny chunk of dragon meat with a wrench of my head. Heat flowed through me, and in a flash of understanding, it hit me.

  This had something to do with the flail. Magic, Marsum’s magic. It made my claws and teeth stronger and sharper than they had ever been.

  Giddy the fuck up!

  In the tumble between me and the dragons, Lila shot into the sky. Her crystalline blue eyes met mine in a flash, and I thought she was going to leave, escape, as was my plan. In fact, I expected no less of her.

  Apparently though, I wasn’t the only one with claws and teeth and an attitude to back them up once royally pissed.

  She dropped like a stone, landing on top of the third dragon’s head. He screeched and then I couldn’t see them because I was tumbling with the dragon I was attached to.

  “Get it off, get it off! Ahhh, the claws burn! Let me go!”

  I grinned and decided to add to the pain, forgetting in the melee that I was supposed to be flying under the radar as it were. For the first time, I felt like a lion, tackling something I should never have tried as a tiny cat. And it was glorious.

  I dropped my mouth and bit into his hide, shaking my head and growling as I tore at the armored scales, peeling them off like peeling an orange, hunks of hide ripping and falling to the snow.

  If I thought the screeching was bad before, it was nothing to what erupted out of him now. You’d think I’d poured acid into the wounds.

  “Let me go, let me go, let me go!” The words squealed into high octaves and I realized he was nothing more than a teenage dragon. Young and easy to scare once he realized he was outmatched. Part of my brain could not comprehend what was happening. The other part was practically crowing.

  I was besting a dragon. All. By. Myself.

  “Only if you promise to let her live, and let me go too!” I shouted back at him.

  “Done, done! Lila lives!” He screeched the words, and from where I hung on, I could see his jeweled eyes rolled back in his head and his body slumped.

  Did the pussy of a dragon just pass out? He fell to the snow and I leapt free of him before he could tumble and crush me. Damn it, he had!

  The other two dragons were gone, leaving just me and Lila. She flew about five feet in the air.

  “Why did you help me?” She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have helped me.”

  “How about we get out of here first before we have a discussion about who should have helped who?” I countered. She bobbed her head and I raced away from the clearing and the dragon we left behind. “Will others come?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Maybe was the chance we had to take. Without the blood lust driving me, my common sense showed back up. Lila was right. I should have walked away because now we’d caused a ruckus and were at least three days from the border of the Witch’s Reign. Three days of dodging dragons in subzero temperatures did not sound like a good idea at all.

  There wasn’t enough breath for talking anyway. We raced through the trees, heading north. We had to get to Maks before the dragons did. They’d be looking for a cat and a tiny dragon. Not a woman with a big hood on. Already I knew Lila would fit in the hood; she was just small enough if she stayed still.

  We burst out of the trees along the edge of the forest and there was a snort and a whinny behind me. I spun around to see Maks sighting a crossbow at me. Shit, I did not want him to see me like this. But what did it matter? He wasn’t going to make it out of this trip, of that much I was sure. I tried not to feel bad about that. But I couldn’t help the shame. It had been with me so long, it was a companion all in itself.

  I opened the door inside my mind to my two-legged form and my bones and body shifted fast so I was upright in a matter of two blinks of the eyes. Maks’s eyes went wide and he lowered the crossbow. Behind us came a boom of trees being shattered and then a roar of a much, much bigger dragon. The teenage dragons had bigger friends, apparently.

  “I have to hide!” Lila cried.

  “In my hood, now. Don’t move. Don’t say a word.” I held the edge of the hood open and she hesitated a moment. “I won’t let you down, Lila. You can trust me.”

  She shook her head once, indecision flickering across her face. Bu
t she had no choice. She had to trust me and we both knew it. She flew down to my shoulder. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven pounds. Almost identical in size to my house cat form. With a liquid ease, she slid into my hood, settling herself across my shoulders.

  Maks handed me Balder’s reins and I mounted. “Trot. Not fast. Just moving away from here,” he said. “We need to make sure they don’t put two and two together.”

  He was right, exactly what I was thinking. Dragons were smart, and if they saw the exit of my paw prints from the trees intersecting with the horses, we were screwed.

  The horses happily broke into matched trots that put distance between us and my prints.

  Lila shivered inside my hood. “They’ll kill us all. You should never have helped me. You don’t know what you’ve brought on yourself.”

  “No, they won’t.” I reached back to my bedroll and fumbled with it until I found the black jewel. I held it in one gloved hand. Warmth rolled from it, and I clung to the stone, terrified I’d drop it in the snow. That would . . . not be good, to say the least.

  “You sure about this?” Maks was beside me and I glanced at him.

  “Of course, I am.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, you know that, right?”

  I grinned, a wild sensation rolling through me, covering the hesitation that crawled through my veins. That recklessness Bryce and so many others had accused me of, what my father had named me after, and it made me want to believe. With the attack on the dragons, something in me had shifted. “Of course, I am.”

  He shook his head. “We need to survive this to get to Darcy, Zam. Not play dodge the dragon.”

  That sobered me and I clung to the new strength I’d seen in myself. I didn’t want to hesitate anymore. I wanted to take life by the balls and run with it. “We will, but we have to be bold to see this to the end. There can be no other way.”

  “This isn’t bold. It’s stupid,” Maks said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Shit happens for a reason, Maks. You should know that by now, living on this side of the wall.”

  Lila tightened her hold on the back of my neck and pressed her head against me. “You should have just let them kill me.”

  “Not going to happen,” I said. No way was I letting someone die just because they were smaller.

  Funny how that struck a chord with me.

  The snap of wings and a snarl wet with fluid—acid most likely—told me our time was up. I slowed Balder to a walk and Maks did the same with Batman. The horses shivered as though they were covered in flies. They knew we were being hunted by a predator large enough to snap them in half. I knew the feeling. Just walking along while a massive dragon flew toward us was not a natural inclination. I wanted to bolt as much as they did.

  “Steady.” I breathed the word and let myself sink into the saddle, a sense of calm flowing over me. Whatever happened would happen and we would either survive or we wouldn’t. Darcy would understand . . . it was a cat thing. Or maybe a woman thing. Maybe both.

  There was no point in worrying about having to face the dragons now. We were facing them whether we wanted to or not.

  “Stop!” The word reverberated around us and the two horses reared up as the world seemed to shake with the thunder. My hood trembled as if it would fall off and I grabbed the edge with one hand. I couldn’t let Lila be exposed. But that meant I dropped my reins, because I still held the black jewel in my other hand.

  Mistake number one.

  Dropping my reins was to Balder a sign to run flat out. Which was not really the plan I had in mind.

  He leapt forward and Maks cursed me as Batman followed his lead.

  The dragon behind us roared again and I knew it wouldn’t matter if we slowed now. The chase was on. We’d either outrun him or we wouldn’t.

  “Lean into it, Maks!” I shouted.

  “You said we were going to negotiate!” he shouted.

  “My mistake!” I glanced at him racing beside me. His brows were knitted but he didn’t look behind us. I did.

  The dragon was coming fast, far faster than the giants, which meant outrunning him was no good. His wing span would swallow us both and liquid that sparkled in the sun dripped from his chin. I assumed it was acid. His neck rippled, the muscles contracting.

  Like a camel right before he spit . . .

  “He’s going to spit at us!” I yelled. Maks twisted around then and shook his head.

  “Damn it, this is not how things are supposed to happen!” he said, and lifted a hand. Like he was going to do what, shake a fist at the dragon and make him run away?

  “Throw the jewel in the air!” Lila yelled. “It will distract him!”

  I didn’t hesitate. I threw the black stone up with all my strength, the light catching it as it tumbled over and over, glittering in the weak winter light.

  I couldn’t help myself. I watched as the dragon’s eyes shot to the jewel, mesmerized. Treasure, he wanted the treasure for himself and he was willing to let us go if it meant he got it.

  He went for it, his front clawed hands outstretched, reaching for the tumbling jewel. It slid through his fingers and fell to the ground behind us. He dropped, scrambled around like a cat diving after a mouse, the skiff of snow bursting into the air.

  “Faster!” I said. I leaned into Balder and Maks did the same with Batman. What surprised me was that for the first time Batman kept up, matching Balder stride for stride. I guess the long, slow trek we’d made had built up good muscle and stamina in him.

  We raced along the tree-lined ground that should have taken us all day in the biting cold and snow, in a matter of a little over an hour. The horses began to show signs of initial fatigue after the adrenaline burst, but I didn’t dare suggest slowing. Not yet. Near the end of their energy, they gave a surge like they’d gotten a second wind somehow, turning on the speed again, surprising me. I wasn’t questioning it, not with a dragon on our asses.

  I put a hand to my hood. “Lila, can you look and tell us if we’re clear?”

  Her head edged out and she looked at the forest to my right as it whipped by. “I think you can slow, we’re into new dragon territory. For now, at least.” She tucked into my hood once more as though she’d been doing it for years. As if she belonged there.

  I give Balder a gentle pull on the reins and he broke his gallop into a trot and then a side-heaving walk. I slid from his back and walked beside him. Maks once more followed my lead, dismounting and giving Batman a break.

  “What the hell was that shit back there?” He strode around the front of the horses to face me. “Seriously, is that how you always do things?”

  I shrugged, doing my best not to get defensive because to be fair, it was not what I’d planned at all. I wasn’t going to show him weakness, though. “Depends on the situation, to be honest.”

  “So, all the stories Steve told us about you fucking up, of making bad choices because you couldn’t make a decision, those were true then?”

  Anger snapped through me, anger and shame and horror that Steve had been talking smack about me. “You don’t understand anything, human. So, why don’t you shut your mouth before I shut it for you.” So much for getting warm and fuzzy with him. For almost liking him, or enjoying his company.

  “Human, what, wait? Are you serious?” Lila stuck her head all the way out, her tail and tiny claws hanging onto me for balance as I walked. “I’ve never seen a real human. He’s not as ugly as I thought he’d be. I thought they all looked like giants, just in miniature. I mean . . . well, you know what I mean.” She tipped her head and I caught a flash of her blue eyes again, assessing Maks.

  Maks glanced at her and his lips tightened. “What are you going to do with a dragon, Zam?”

  I shrugged. “Saved her.”

  “You . . . aren’t serious, are you?” He stared at me. “Dragons can’t be trusted, you know that. Hell, even I know that.”

  I fought the grimace that wanted to take over my face because ther
e was some truth to that. Dragons were actors to the nth degree, able to make you believe anything they wanted. Then again. “Humans can’t be trusted, either, according to Ish and my father. Which means I can’t trust you. Which is fine by me.” I looked past him, my ears straining for any sign of pursuit.

  “Who is Ish? Is that your mother?” Lila came out a little farther so her front half was visible, her tail and butt still inside my hood.

  “We can’t take a dragon with us,” Maks said. “It’s going to be hard enough getting through the cold, never mind with a lizard that can’t stand the frigid temperatures. It’s cold here, but it’s going to get far colder, and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re here to save Darcy, not a runt of a dragon.”

  I whipped around and slammed a hand into his chest, shoving him back a few steps, I think shocking us both. “I have not forgotten. If anything, we’re farther ahead now than we would have been otherwise. The horses covered a day’s worth of ground in an hour.”

  “Yeah, but the dragons will come looking for us because we’ve pissed them off and given them something to chase along with taking someone that I assume they wanted to kill?” He shoved my hand away and glanced at Lila at the edge of my hood.

  He wanted to throw her away because she was small and weak like me. She was trouble, like me.

  “Then that means we have to go faster. Which means we get to Darcy sooner. Which means we go home sooner. All good things, Maks.” I gave him a tight smile, fighting not to growl at him.

  He shook his head. “I can see why Steve doesn’t like to work with you. Not only are you impetuous, you’re a damn house cat. I thought I was going with something truly bad-ass, not . . . that.” His words were hard and disbelief filled them. Disbelief and condescension.

  I flinched as if he’d slapped me. I turned to Balder and mounted up. “Fuck you, Maks.” I gave Balder my heels and he broke into a trot that had us ahead of Maks and Batman. Batman whinnied after us as if he could hold us back.