Dragon (7 page)

Ion is moving briskly, almost at a jog. Obviously, if we’re going to stay ahead of Ram (who’s not going to just roll over and go back to sleep if he wakes up and realizes I’m missing) we’re going to have to move fast, at least until we get to the car.

If we can reach the car, there will be no way Ram will be able to catch us. We walked all day. If we run most of the night, it won’t take us that long to get to the car. How many days will it take to drive home through Russia? A few maybe, depending on how much we sleep. I don’t have much experience driving, but driving instruction was part of the curriculum at Saint Evangeline’s, and I have my license. I can take a turn driving so Ion can sleep.

I could be home by the end of the week.

The thought pushes me forward, and I run faster, leaping the smaller branches, pounding through the underbrush, panting hard.

And then I smell it.

At first I assume it’s the odor of a nearby farm with a lot of livestock. Or maybe I’m crunching some odoriferous leaves as I bound through the forest.

But I sniff harder, inhaling specifically through my nose. It’s faint at first, and I think maybe I’m paranoid, or imagining things, but the further we run, the thicker the smell gets, until there’s no denying what it is.

“Ion!” I call out to him, but he doesn’t slow down.

He’s been pulling ahead of me, never mind that I’ve been running faster and faster, until my throat burns with bile, which mixes with the stink of the yagi, so thick I could choke.

Ion doesn’t answer, only runs faster.

I don’t want to yell, or do anything to draw any more attention to myself than I’ve already done by crashing through the dark woods. You know, just in case the yagi haven’t noticed me yet.

Right.

“Ion!” I practically scream his name.

He glances back.

Okay, two weird things. One, he’s finally taken off his sunglasses, which he’d been wearing all night (I guess I sort of figured they were prescription? Honestly, his eyewear has been the least of my concerns) and his eyes are sort of glowing a silvery green, which would be right lovely if it wasn’t completely unnatural.

It’s like they’re lit up from behind, a little like how cat’s eyes glow at night, except more. It’s freaking me out.

The other thing, which only serves to make the first thing a ba-zillion times more freaky, is that he’s grinning.

Not a friendly grin.

More like an evil, mocking, hungry grin.

Yes, hungry.

I see this all in an instant, in way less time than it takes to tell it. At the same time, I’m still running and staring at Ion, so of course you can guess what happens next.

I trip over a branch and stumble forward, skidding along the undergrowth (I really hope there’s no poison ivy here, because I’ve had that before and it was awful) and kind of rolling onto my back as these unnatural clacking noises clatter all around me.

Something is moving toward me through the woods. Moonlight glints off squat, domed heads. I can’t see them terribly well in the darkness, but what I can see looks like bugs walking upright, except they’re taller than I am, and they’re making the most horrendous rasping sound, kind of like they’re clearing their throats preparing to spit.

Yagi.

They’re coming from every direction.

“Ion!” I scream again, this time not so much calling out his name, as just screaming.

The moon is still just a sliver, the light mostly shadow and darkness, but I can see their shiny heads pouring from the trees on all sides, closing in on me. The smell is thick, so thick.

I am completely surrounded.

The rasping sound is seriously freaking me out. I’m pretty much just screaming back at them now, a battle for volume I can’t begin to win. Their noise is unearthly, grating, making me clench my teeth together, locking all my joints as I lie frozen on the ground, rendered immobile by that hideous sound.

The simmering moonlight moves in ripples off their heads, highlighting what it had at first camouflaged. Atop their domed heads, what first looked like eyebrows now spring up straight from their heads like spears. Antenna? Horns? The first of the yagi dip their heads toward me, swinging the spears like swords to slice, jab, or impale.

My swords are digging into my back, a sharp, stabbing sensation that pierces my terror and reminds me that I have swords.

I have swords! The reminder is enough to jolt me out of my sound-induced stupor. Leaping to my feet, I grab my two longest and baddest swords, the ones I keep in the double baldrics in an “x” across my back. I’m hoping they’ll do that reassuring singing thing when I pull them out, the resonating hum of metal on metal that ought to send a chill running down the enemy’s spine, and maybe even overpower their unearthly grating hiss.

But they don’t. My backpack is in the way and my arms are weak and trembley from fear and exhaustion (seriously, what time is it, anyway? Shouldn’t the sun come up so I can at least see what I’m doing?). So one sword sort of clatters from its sheath and the other sticks halfway out and I have to give it a couple of extra tugs, during which time the first of the yagi pounce, charging at me like angry insect bulls, horns down, ready to skewer me.

The one free sword is in my left hand, my dominant hand (because I wasn’t weird enough already, I guess) and I swing it fiercely toward the two approaching creatures while I pull the other sword free with a final tug.

Theoretically—and this actually worked a bunch of times when I was fighting beef carcasses, which in addition to standing still and not fighting back, don’t even have skin to resist my blades—the swing of my sword should have decapitated the yagi.

You know, that whole defending-myself-against-my-enemies-with-such-effective-swordwork-my-blade-never-touches-theirs thing that sounded so good in the meat locker.

Now it sounds utterly naïve.

Because I haven’t decapitated anything. My blades deflected their horns, which is helpful insofar as I have not been impaled, but that’s all I’ve accomplished.

I’m not even sure where the yagis’ heads are, or if they even have heads, or just those rapier-like spears sticking out from the bulge of their shoulders. I just know, in spite of the darkness, that I have not decapitated them, because I know how my blades feel in my hands when I’ve sliced through something, or when I’ve missed entirely and gone swinging around in a circle, nearly tripping over myself in the darkness, which would very nearly have been what happened now, had it not been for the twanging ping against their antennae spears.

Not that I really missed. I mean, I swung in the direction I wanted to swing. It’s just that, unlike dead cow carcasses, yagi can duck.

Okay, learning curve. I can do this.

I have to. It’s not as though I have any choice.

I face the nearest grating noises and swing my blades again. If nothing else, I’ll just keep swinging so the creepy creatures stay at arms’ length, because I do not want them touching me, or running me through with their antennae, or making me freeze up again with that grating noise (they’re still making the grating noise, it’s just that as long as I keep moving, it doesn’t seem to overpower me).

With this swing, I make contact, but instead of a satisfying slicing sensation resonating through my swords, I feel the wrenching twist of a glancing blow.

What, are these guys armored? Seriously, it’s like they’re steel-plated, or something.

“Ion!” I scream his name again, desperate for him to help me, and angry at him for not keeping me safe.

Ram always kept me safe.

Maybe I shouldn’t have left Ram.

The thought of Ram reminds me, not so much on a conscious level, but in a muscle-memory sort of way, of the butterfly stroke maneuver he taught me—could that have only been yesterday?

I pull my shoulders back and straighten, executing the move, both blades simultaneously, just as he taught me.

I’m not really aiming, just trying to keep my swords moving to keep the yagi away, to deflect their horns, but they’re close enough now, practically swarming me, that my sword hits one somewhere about the shoulder.

The blade glances against the armor, but not like before. No, this time the movement—drawing both blades in, together and toward me—pulls the blade flat and swift alongside the armor, inward, toward the yagi’s neck, slicing his head clean off.

The fact that I actually got something right is a shock to me, and might have been enough to make me stand still and stare, except thankfully, that muscle memory thing has combined with the serious levels of adrenaline that are searing through me right now, and I don’t pause or falter or anything. I just keep swinging.

Which is probably good because I have a sense that if I stop moving for too long, that dreadful sound they’re making will freeze my muscles rigid and lock my joints in place, which in addition to being a ghastly feeling, would also make me easy prey for their horns and talons.

So I swing my swords like I’m cutting an endless supply of ribeyes.

Yagi heads are falling everywhere. I bound forward, past two bodies as they fall, trying to get away from the slippery, smooth-domed heads that are rolling near my feet. They’re kind of greasy, too. Instead of blood they’re giving off this oily gunk that evaporates into a vapor that stings my eyes.

I’m moving backward, like I’m doing a backward butterfly stroke, escaping a step or two further with every head I decapitate.

I step free, spin, swing. For one thrilling moment, I think maybe I’ve got this.

And then I realize there’s someone else in the woods with me, crashing through the trees. It’s not Ion—last I saw him, he was standing off in the other direction, watching me with that hungry, mocking grin.

Whatever it is that’s coming toward me, it’s bigger than Ion, bigger than the yagi. Silver moonlight glints off two swords, and an unnatural cry cuts through the darkness, louder even than the wailing yagi, as something huge and angry bounds toward me.

Chapter Eight

I leap away from the screaming swordsman in the direction of more yagi, coming at them before they come at me. I have no choice but to keep slicing, using the move Ram taught me, decapitating yagi as fast as I can, spinning as I go to make sure none of them sneak up behind me and spear me through. Their horns have got to be two feet long, maybe longer—which, granted, isn’t quite as long as my swords, and certainly not as long as my reach, arms and swords combined, but they’re still insanely sharp and wicked looking.

Amazingly enough, although there had to be a least a dozen of these things, the ones left standing are beginning to be seriously outnumbered by the twitching corpses on the ground.

Now if I can just finish off the rest without tripping and accidentally impaling myself on my own sword.

This would be a lot easier if I had any light to see by. The wailing hiss of the living yagi is getting drowned out by the clatter of the fallen, but I can still hear Ion’s laughter. I turn toward it.

The screaming swordsman has stopped screaming and is beheading the last of the yagi. For one disoriented moment, in the darkness, I think it must be Ion, finally helping me.

But it almost looks like Ram. Could he have awakened and tracked us down and come to my aid? I suppose it’s possible.

Even as these thoughts register, I lower my exhausted arms and zero in on Ion’s laughter.

And something exceedingly freakish is happening. I mean more exceedingly freakish than decapitating yagi in the darkness of the Romanian woods.

Ion’s laughter is making him grow, almost like blowing up a balloon. Except, instead of being a bigger, rounder form of Ion, he’s changing shape, too.

And sprouting wings.

All of this is suddenly surprisingly visible because that kind of glowing gray-green-silveriness of his eyes is now emanating out of the rest of his body, which has a sort of shiny scaly appearance like a fish—like a lake trout or salmon. Except glowing. With wings.

Ion is turning into a dragon.

By the time I realize it, he’s done. He’s huge. Two, maybe three times bigger than he was before, but with a longer neck so that if he stretched out, he’d be longer still.

And then his wings, which have so far been poised above his shoulders, unfurl like an opening umbrella. Like a huge, bat-winged umbrella that glows with a silvery sheen, stretching through the woods, higher than the trees.

I’m not dreaming. I promise. It would be a nightmare, anyway, but I’m not asleep. Seriously, my subconscious never comes up with anything this vivid.

The air around me churns as Ion extends himself, straining upward with those massive wings far higher than the trees, beating the hair once, twice, three times, and lifting off the ground.

I’m standing there gaping, open mouthed (in my defense, I was sucking in air after an exhausting fight) when I realize Ion is flying toward me. But in the time it takes me to realize it, he’s there, his body so big that even as I dive away, all he has to do is extend one taloned leg to reach me. He wraps his clawed toes tight around my torso and plucks me from the ground.

The dragon Ion beats his mighty wings and lifts me up past the trees, high into the air toward the clouds. The woods and fallen yagi disappear from sight in the darkness, and I turn my attention to my predicament, able to think clearly for the first time now that we’re free of the sound of wailing yagi and the numbing gas of their vaporous slime.

Okay, I know that it wasn’t so very long ago, maybe half an hour at most, that I trusted Ion and followed him willingly through the woods. And I know it’s theoretically possible that he is somehow rescuing me, whisking me away to safety, or whatever.

But I really don’t believe that’s what’s happening. Sometime in the last half hour, between his mocking smile, his lack of willingness to help me when I screamed his name, and the way he stayed back while the yagi nearly overwhelmed me, I realized that Ion is not on my side. I shouldn’t trust him. And I don’t want to go wherever he’s taking me.

Besides which, I’ve been afraid of dragons ever since I thought I saw them in the sky the night my village was attacked. So being picked up by a dragon and carried off against my will?