Centaur of the Crime: Book One of 'Fantasy and Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 1) (16 page)

“
Ad hóigh
, Fayleene.” Galen indicated me with the sweep of his stout arm. “I have brought you a visitor from another world.”

“We know. The Albess told of this.”

A flicker of movement in the mist. Or were my eyes playing tricks? I swore that I’d seen the hint of long, thin, spidery legs. Something with more than two legs, anyway.

I shuddered. Yeah, with my luck, I wasn’t going to be drawing fey folk that looked like leaf-clad pixies from
Fantasia
. For chrissake, what if the Fayleene were giant spiders? Just the perfect thing to cap off a lovely evening.

“We demand to know something, wizard!” The voice got a little higher pitched, sharper. “Why have you drawn treachery to us?”

“Treachery? Fey folk, I have always been a friend!” Galen protested. “I would never knowingly do such a thing!”

A rapid babble of discussion. Again, I caught a glimpse of something in the fog. It was hard to make out in the moonlight. Splotches of white against some darker surface.

I smelled nothing but the wet embrace of mist. Until a stray breeze all but shoved the scent of a freshly struck match up one nostril.

My horse squealed in fear. The reins tore free from my grip as it bolted.

“If you did not,” the Fayleene voice said, “then someone has sent dragons after you, as well as us. ‘Ware! They come upon us with claws and flame!”

Galen’s face went ashen as he glanced over his shoulder. Without turning away, he groped for the sword that hung at his side. To my amazement, he reversed his grip on it, offering it hilt-first to me.

I took it, more out of surprise than anything else. I hadn’t held a sword since an outing with the Renaissance Fair people in my college days. And those weapons were little more than glorified stage props.

This damned thing looked all too real, bright and scalpel-sharp.

“Galen!” I objected, “I don’t know how to use this effing thing!”

“Then our present situation would be a superb time to learn,” he replied. He pivoted around, eyes intent on something approaching us. “Dayna…
get down!
”

My skin prickled as I heard a not-so-distant bellow.

Mama Chrissie didn’t raise fools for daughters, so I listened to what my wizard friend said. I threw myself upon the moist, misty earth. A ghastly, reptilian roar filled the night air.

I tried to make my spine telescope into my stomach.

Galen danced to one side. A rush of air rippled above me, around me. Something with the wingspan of a Piper Cub shot overhead and past.

I heard the pulse of giant, leathery wings. Saw something ghastly dive towards the tree line. It stooped like a hawk. A terrible scream of triumph mixed with the shriek of my horse.

The thing turned, hovered in mid-air. I saw it clearly now.

Think of the veloceraptors you’ve seen on the science channel’s ‘Dinosaur Week’. Double the size, buff it out. Give it wings, a neck like a snake, and a pair of backwards-facing horns that jutted from its skull like spears.

Not scary enough? Dip its scales in paint the color of drying blood.

The dragon bent its neck and snatched the horse from where it gripped the poor animal in its talons. Saw-toothed jaws shook back and forth. The terrible sound of teeth ripping muscle.

The
crack
of bone.

My horse stopped squealing.

Dull thuds of Galen’s hooves on mossy ground.

I turned my head, saw a second dragon appear from the trees off on the centaur’s side. This one sported yellow stripes down the sides and an extra pair of horns. As if some hot-rodding Angeleno had decided to trick out the basic draconian design.

This dragon didn’t waste time with a roar. It made an ungracious sound like a belch. Then it sent a jet of fire at the wizard.

Galen moved his hand down in a single, smooth motion. The stream of flame shot off to one side. The stink of brimstone. The stench of menthol paste on a red-hot griddle rose from the burning trees.

The centaur dug his hooves into the soft turf. He pointed at the beast.

“
Hóski, seydir!
”

Blue lightning ran down Galen’s arm. Like a high voltage spark, the bolt leaped from the tip of his finger to the dragon’s nose.

A
bang!
and the reptile flew over backwards into the trees. It righted itself, hissing like a seriously pissed bulldozer, and came at the wizard again.

Off to the other side, the sounds of chewing stopped as the first dragon finished swallowing what remained of my mount. A snake-like forked tongue flicked out, cleaning its jaws.

The thing’s glassy green cat-eyes simply skipped over me. Instead, they fixed on the larger, more edible target. The dragon shifted to all fours, getting ready to spring at Galen’s exposed back.

Oh, damn.

Damn, damn, and toss in another damn for good measure.

I got to my feet. Smudges of mud and wet moss covered the front of my violet top and what had been my not-too-badly wrinkled Ann Taylor pants. I made a laughable dragon slayer. I don’t think even the best fantasy artist could’ve made a cheesecake warrior princess picture out of it.

I held the sword up. The tip wavered as my hand shook. I grabbed the hilt with both hands in order to steady it.

What in God’s name was I doing?

That’s when my mind did one of its weird little
clicks
.

I’d mostly been focused on the business end of the dragons. The teeth, the horns, the claws. But my brain had registered a little gleam from each of the dragons’ left forearms.

I squinted, and then made out a thick bronze circlet, inscribed with runes.

These weren’t wild creatures. They
belonged
to someone. Someone who wanted me and Galen dead.

And that finally managed to piss me off.

Big time.

I lowered my sword as I realized what I had to do next.

Chapter Eighteen

It’s funny how certain life events put things in perspective.

I’d had some rough times, working for the M.E.’s office back in Los Angeles. Times where I was sure that things couldn’t get any worse. Yeah, that sort of took a back seat to being sandwiched in between two giant reptiles with serious attitude problems.

Galen seemed to be holding his own when it came to the racing-stripe dragon, even though it breathed fire. But if I didn’t do something, the remaining one would come in on his blind side.

Tear him apart, the way it did to my horse.

The wizard had been kind enough to lend me a sword. That said, I wasn’t about to charge into battle. I’d probably end up as dragon kibble in the process.

I lowered my weapon, holding it in one hand as I knelt. With my other hand, I groped around in the mist and found a rock.

Now I was in business.

Here’s a bit of Dayna-trivia I never thought would come in handy. Back in Pike County Elementary, there were lots of boys dumb enough to bet that I couldn’t skip a stone off the pond a dozen times or more. I won more than a few lunches that way.

Point being: I knew how to sling a stone.

The red dragon shifted to a crouch, coiling its muscles to spring. That’s when it got a stone in the eye, courtesy of yours truly. It raised its head and let out a roar of agony.

Galen side-stepped another jet of fire with an agility that any earthly equine would have envied. He gestured, shouted. Blue sparks blasted the second dragon back again.

The centaur risked a glance back at me. Sweat poured from his forehead.

“Are you mad?” he gasped, “These foes are beyond you! Run!”

“If I don’t draw this one’s attention, you’ll be torn to pieces,” I shot back. “They’ve got bracelets or something on their left foreleg. That tell you anything?”

“Bracelets? But that would mean…” His expression darkened. Galen slid right past fear and into anger, just as I had done. “That would mean I have something to work with.”

The wizard spoke a new phrase and jabbed his hand in the direction of the fire-breather. Instead of a crackle of energy, I heard the hiss of an electric hot plate. The reptile’s bracelet glowed white hot. Smoke began to rise from its foreleg. It fell over, let out a spine-tingling yowl. Its spiked tail thrashed the trees around it to kindling.

The dragon I’d beaned with the stone finished its bellowing. A white scuff mark marred the clear scale that covered its eye. It shifted to focus on me with a crocodilian snarl.

I ran.

A triumphant shriek as it pursued me. I dashed through the narrowest openings I could find in the tangled mass of woodland. All around us, the forest had been set ablaze.

Flames licked at my sleeve as I ducked through a mass of burning vines. Smoke mixed with the ground mist. The reflection from the fire made it look as if I were running through molten lava.

I kept seeing lithe shapes in the murky light. Shapes that bounded away, kept to the shadows as I ran past. One shape broke away and ran next to me for a moment.

I thought I heard a hoof-like patter. But that couldn’t be. I’d left Galen far behind.

“Keep on!” said a voice. The Gaelic-tinged voice sounded like a young man’s this time. “I can distract him, you keep going!”

Jaws snapped. A nearby branch shattered.

I suppressed a scream and kept moving forward. Adrenaline surged into my veins. Made my sweat run cold like beads of ice down my neck.

I heard the voice again, this time at my back. This time it was taunting.

“Oh, am I too nimble for you? How very sad.”

An answering roar of frustration.

I pushed myself to run faster. My lungs burned. The entire world seemed to be on fire.

Smoke blurred my vision. Forced itself down my windpipe. Burning, burning like battery acid.

“Go left!” the voice said to me. “Down and to your left!”

I hesitated. Off that way, two massive trees had fallen together. Leaning against each other. As if embracing to the last.

The A-shaped opening between them smoldered fitfully, as if it were about to burst into flame.

“Go! Go!”

I launched myself into space.

Trees behind me splintered with a
crash!

I dove through the opening. I hit the ground rolling.

A sharp pain ran down my elbow like an electric shock. The impact drove my breath from me. I came up into a half-crouch, gasping.

I held my sword out. The blade quivered. Pathetically trying to defend myself from something way, way outside Dayna Chrissie’s weight class.

A scarlet-scaled head punched through the opening, crocodile jaws snapping. I cried out and slid backwards on my butt out of reach. The dragon hissed and began to pull its head back through the opening.

That’s when the two backwards facing horns got stuck in the wood.

A terrible thrashing from the beast. An earth-shaking bellow of rage followed. Massive talons clawed and striped away chunks of wood from the trees that pinioned the dragon’s head. The circlet of bronze around the animal’s foreleg clinked against the rough bark.

“It’ll be free any moment now,” the voice said, from somewhere low and off to my side. “I can tell that it’s not your way, but if you don’t kill it…”

I wish I could say that some Jiminy-cricket style conscience popped up and told me I shouldn’t end that thing’s life. I wasn’t angry at the dragon anymore. Only the person who sent it. And that last thought—that I might deprive that person of another weapon—sealed the deal for me.

I held my sword hilt firmly with both hands. Though my lungs burned, somehow I found enough air to scream. I ran at my target, aiming for the scuff mark that I’d put like a little white crosshair on the dragon’s eye.

The sharp point of my sword punched through. Green ichor flowed out over my hands, burning. In its last thrash, its death struggle, the reptile flung me away.