Backyard Dragons (11 page)

“That would kill her. You recently deemed her worthy of a Knight’s weapon. It would be a waste. Of all the Knights, you should well know we can’t afford to waste any.”

Caius tugged on the chain, seeming to weigh the options. “She’s barely able to defend herself.”

“She’s young. In time, I believe she’ll become one of our most powerful Knights.”

Rondy’s vote of confidence bolstered Claire. She’d had no idea he thought that and saw no reason for him to lie here. Caius would probably see right through him if he tried. “I’m worthy,” she managed to tell Caius.

“Are you?” Caius let go of the locket. “Prove it.” He planted a sandal on her back and shoved.

She flailed and caught nothing. Plummeting through the air, she saw the ground slowly coming closer and didn’t want to watch. She turned her body over. Above her, Enion pumped his wings furiously, trying to reach her. Beyond him, she caught flashes of silver from Rondy and Caius battling at the top of the cliff.

With Enion in sight, a burst of hope exploded in Claire’s chest. She reached for her dragon, wanting him to catch her so hard it hurt. Enion folded his wings against his body, letting gravity carry him closer. As he neared, he flung a claw out and wrapped it around her foot. He pulled her close. She curled around his body.

He snapped his wings out, slowing their fall. The one large eye she could see widened in panic. His body twisted. Claire buried her face in Enion’s smooth skin. She knew he could pull up in time. His muscles bulged and bunched and rolled. He grunted.

They crashed.

She’d never felt so much pain. The impact tore her apart and crushed everything. Claire groaned and had to work to open her eyes. Sudden agony ten times worse than the initial crash coursed through her as she saw her broken body. Breathing became difficult; she had to puff and pant to suck in tiny lungfuls of air.

Blood-slicked stone spikes impaled her arms and chest. Her locket dangled from the tip of one spike, the point stuck through the loop holding it onto her necklace. A giant pile of dragon lay slumped over her legs, more spikes ripped through his wings. With so much girth, at least none had punched all the way through his body.

Enion groaned and rolled farther onto Claire. White sparks encroached on her vision. She made breathy, screechy noises around the blood dribbling out of her mouth. Enion rolled the other way. Crushing spikes with his body, he rumbled in pitiful agony.

Flashes of steel against the bright blue in the distance urged Claire to get up. Rondy still fought on her behalf. She should be doing this on her own, not with a chaperone. Knights fought their own battles. Without Rondy, she’d probably already be dead, but he didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of this struggle.

“Not. Dead. Yet.” She gritted her teeth, refusing to give up, and tried to sit. The spikes hurt more sliding out of her arms and chest than they had going in. Tears streaming down her face, she wrenched her bleeding arms into her dragon-covered lap. “Curl,” she begged her fingers. Both hands twitched.

“Enion.” She leaned over to rest her forehead against Enion’s heaving bulk, sobbing and unable to stop. “Have to get up. Have to fight.”

“Hurts. Can’t.”

The absurd sound of such a deep voice whining made Claire stop, as if someone had slapped her. “Can.”

“Can’t.”

Knowing how hard he’d fought to reach her as they fell, she wanted to kick him. “You mean
won’t
. I will.” She shoved the dragon off her legs, barely registering how her hands moved now that she refused to accept anything less than obedience from her body.

Broken spikes had lodged in her legs. Everything hurt. She wobbled to her feet anyway. With a steadying hand on Enion’s side, she caught her breath. “Stay here if you need to. I’m going to fight.” Raising her gaze to the sky, she had no idea how she’d accomplish this. They lay at the bottom of a deep hole, foot-long spikes jutting out all around. Worse, she had no idea what had happened to her dagger.

Limbs still shaking and oozing blood in a dozen places, Claire grabbed a spike, thinking to use them as a kind of ladder. The tip broke off in her hand. She tossed it aside and curled her fingers around the thicker base. This seemed to hold well enough. If she had to take the time to knock the points off every single spike in here to get out, she would.

Heedless of fresh injuries, she punched down and smashed the tips off five spikes at once. She jabbed with her knee and broke more. When she had enough space, she grabbed the base of two spikes, stuck her foot on another, and jumped to get her other foot on a higher one. Sweeping her arm across spikes over her head, she smashed more tips away.

Progress would be slow.

Chapter 16

Justin

When Justin came to, he feared he might be a Phasm. A siren blared close enough to hurt his ears, making him cringe at the idea he’d died in the midst of something violent happening. That would make him a corrupted Phasm, and he didn’t want to have to be hunted and destroyed while he schemed to take down the Knights and the Palace.

Aches in his legs, combined with the coherence of his thoughts, made him reject the idea. As far as he knew, Phasms didn’t feel pain, corrupted or not. He opened his eyes and discovered he’d been loaded into an ambulance. The back doors remained open, showing him a clear, bright blue sky and a paramedic trying to get a stethoscope under his armor.

“Knock it off,” he growled, shoving the woman aside. “I’m fine.”

She squawked in surprise and stumbled against the cabinets behind her. “You’re not fine. A car hit you, and you passed out in the middle of the street.”

No one else had seen shadow snakes. Good. He sat up and checked his legs. His soaked jeans showed no sign of injury. Rain had washed away all the blood. “Do I look like I got hit by a car?”

“Well, no. But there’s a car with a smashed grille, and the driver swears you jumped in front of his car out of nowhere in the pouring rain.” She prodded his shin.

Justin bit back a wince. Whatever those shadows did, the injuries were taking longer to heal than normal. They might have had venom. He had to figure out where they came from and why. He also had to find Tariel. She’d undoubtedly survived, but if her wounds healed as slow as his, she could be lying in a ditch, in serious pain.

“I’m fine. I don’t need medical attention.” He yanked the IV needle out of his arm and wondered how long he’d been out.

“I disagree.”

“You can’t take me against my will.” Thankful they hadn’t tried to cut off his jeans or boots yet, he slid his feet to the floor.

“You’re not leaving without signing a release waiver.”

“Fine. I’ll sign your stupid paper. Was there a horse nearby?” He launched himself to his feet. His knees buckled, and he fell to the street.

The paramedic perched on the bumper, looking down at him. “Oh, yeah, you’re completely fine.”

“Shut up.” He rolled onto his stomach and looked around. Police directed traffic around the lane blocked off by the ambulance. Just up the street, he saw a guy in a grease-stained jumpsuit loading a black sedan onto a flatbed tow truck, its front end crumpled.

Justin didn’t remember being hit by a car. He remembered being flung by a shadow snake. Maybe he’d actually staggered away from the streetlight and into the street, in front of that car. Propping himself up, he had to wonder again where those things came from. If the storm had moved on when the shadows were done, they may have caused the strange weather in the first place. In that case, he might be able to think of a way to find them.

The paramedic stood beside him and tried to help him up. He shrugged her off and used the ambulance’s bumper instead.

“Where’s my sword?”

“You’re just not going to accept any help, are you?”

“No. Where’s the sword? And the horse. I need both.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. “If you’re fine, then you don’t need my help. Try the cops.” Without waiting for him to move, the paramedic grabbed one rear ambulance door and threw it shut.

Justin took the hint and forced himself to stand on his own two feet. It hurt, but he’d worked through worse. Tariel probably had run a fair distance to dislodge those shadows. He wondered if she’d taken Drew home rather than waiting around here for him to wake up. Keeping the kid out of harm’s way would rank higher on her list than sticking around to make Justin heal faster when his injuries didn’t threaten his life.

“You, the knight guy,” a uniformed patrolman said. He waved to get Justin’s attention.

“Great,” Justin grumbled. He gave a shot at flashing the officer a smile and knew it fell flat. “Where’s my sword?”

“Should he be walking around?” The officer directed this question to the paramedic, who approached with a clipboard and pen.

“He’s refusing medical treatment.” She shoved the clipboard at Justin’s hands. “Because he’s an idiot.”

“Thanks. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing, you know.” He took both pen and clipboard and scanned the form to figure out where to sign it. “I still want my sword.”

“It’s been bagged as evidence,” the officer said.

“Evidence of what?” He scribbled his name across a line and handed it back.

“Attempted aggravated assault.”

Justin squinted, trying to piece together the situation. “Am I being arrested for getting hit by a car?”

“He’s all yours,” the paramedic said as she walked away.

The officer crossed his arms. He stood a few inches shorter than Justin and had less muscle mass. “Do I need to arrest you? You could come willingly and offer a statement instead.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Justin pushed the cop aside and staggered to the nearest patrol car. He’d have to straighten this out later. For now, he needed to get to the bottom of the shadow snake problem. Shadows appearing in the middle of the street didn’t happen by accident. Someone or something called or created them, and he needed to put a stop to that as soon as possible.

“Sir, you need to stop.”

Justin paused at the police cruiser’s driver side door, intending to pop the trunk, and saw the officer had pointed a gun at him. Bullets wouldn’t penetrate his armor or his jeans, so he only needed to worry about his head. Ducking out of sight, he yanked the door open and used the lever to open the trunk.

“Stop right there.” Another officer came around the front of the car, also holding a gun.

Getting annoyed, Justin waved him off. “I just need my sword.” He crossed the distance to the trunk and flicked his gaze over the contents. A black plastic garbage bag taped around something the right size to be his sword stood out among the yellow tool box, spare Kevlar vests, and two cardboard boxes.

“Sir, this is your last warning.”

Justin grabbed the bag and punched the blade’s tip through the plastic. “Go ahead,” he muttered. “Shoot me.” As he slammed the trunk shut, he saw Tariel’s head peering around the corner of a sandwich shop up the street. Only a few hundred yards stood between them.

He used the blade to slice the bag open and gripped the familiar hilt. These cops represented a distraction from his duty. As he always did when presented with such situations, he let the guise of the deluded but harmless Knight of Portland settle over him. “Gentlemen, we’re on the same team. You protect people by upholding the laws of our benevolent ruler. I, on the other hand, am beholden to a higher power. My duty demands I root out corruption in unexpected places. Do you not see the shadows among us?”

Deliberately pointing at nothing, he raised his sword. “There, my good men! I must away to fight the forces of evil.” Trusting they’d do what Portland cops always did and treat him as nothing more than another local weirdo, he gritted his teeth against the sharp stinging still affecting his legs and charged away from all the nearby people. Past the police cars, he found empty air and swung his sword at it. “Ha ha!” He sheathed his blade triumphantly. “Victory for us all. Until we meet again, noble guardsmen!”

Justin raised a fist in solidarity and saw the cops watching him, their guns lowered. He jogged the distance to Tariel. Drew clung to her saddle, his usually pale skin bright pink. The kid had somehow managed to get a sunburn through all of this.

“Are they following?” Justin sagged against Tariel, grateful for her support.

“No, you’re good. I never get tired of watching you pull that routine.” Tariel used her chin to urge him a few steps farther from the corner. “I’m still aching from those shadow things biting me. You?”

“Yes, you could say that.” He groaned as he pulled himself onto her back, behind Drew. “What happened to you?”

“I managed to scrape them off with a park bench and bite their heads off. I think the injuries healed already, but I suspect they drained more than blood.”

“I was thinking venom, but it makes more sense they’d feed on souls. That being the case, destroying them should have released the energy back to us, shouldn’t it? They didn’t have time to digest anything.”

“Unless they served as channels,” Tariel said, “feeding the energy back to their creator. In that case, we’d have to find and kill him to fully heal.”

Justin turned in the saddle, looking back toward Anne’s house. “Or her.” He scratched his cheek, trying to picture Anne summoning shadow snakes. “It really can’t be Anne. She does plant magic. Low grade stuff.”

“We don’t really know that much about witches. With Kurt’s demesne linked there…”

“He’s not corrupted.” Justin curled his hand into a fist, prepared to lean around Drew to thump Tariel between the ears if she disagreed.

“You’ve met him. I trust your judgment. On this particular thing, anyway.”

“It’s got to be someone she knows.”

“Are—” Drew’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “Are we going home now?”

“Yes. You’re not equipped to deal with this. I need to you tell Marie that I’ve got things to handle and will be back late tonight.”

Drew whimpered. Justin couldn’t fault him for that.

Chapter 17

Claire

Five feet up the side of the pit, Claire’s hand slipped. She fell, hitting several spikes again. Enion had spent the past several minutes carefully pulling his wings and body off the spikes, filling the air with grunting and groaning.