Chapter 40
forty
Dragon Bait
Itry to make eye contact with others around us, but it’s dark enough that I’m not sure anyone notices our distress.
Not as if they could do anything about it.
I have no idea what this hunter’s deal is, but I know he can rip open portals between worlds and cast energy shields from the thing on his arm.
Who knows if that snap I heard was a blade coming out, or something even more deadly.
I know I should stop looking for help from ordinary strangers, they’d only get hurt, but I can’t help scanning the crowd as we’re corralled toward the exit.
Renee pinches my forearm and I look at her just as she goes down, throwing herself forward. She yanks the hunter off balance and he loses his grip on me.
“Run!” Renee screams as she kicks and flails.
I hesitate a fraction of a second before bolting.
The heels of my shoes sink into the dirt as I push through the crowd.
I curse them, but there’s no time to take them off.
There’s shouting as people behind me realize something is happening.
I look over my shoulder to see the hunter tackled to the ground by a mob of lumberjacks promoting their forestry business.
I turn back to help when another hand grabs a fistful of my hair. My heart seizes in my chest and panic takes me. I grab their wrist as I suck in a gasp, but when I try to scream, nothing comes out. The crowd is all turned away, looking at Renee and the hunter.
“You’ve made this far more complicated for Master than it needed to be,” a feminine voice whispers in my ear.
She’s familiar, but I can’t place her. Another hunter? How?
“Camouflage us, now.”
My stomach twists. How could she know about my magic?
“Now,” she growls, and I feel the sharp sting of something unnatural in my chest. “You’ll lose more than your voice if you don’t comply.”
I don’t want to relinquish my hold on her wrist, so I do it one handed. My fingers tremble as I push my magic out, wrapping us in a sloppy shield of invisibility. She grabs my bag and I yank it into my chest. The corner of the book bites into my sternum and I remember: the magic brand!
I release her wrist and reach for the neck of my shirt, but she’s faster, and stronger. She grabs my arm and twists it behind my back.
“Not yet,” she says. “We aren’t ready for him.”
I try to scream and my throat fills with glass. My eyes water but I’m silent.
The woman turns me, one hand on the bag clutched at my chest, the other holding my arm firmly in a painful twist.
“Don’t even think about dropping that camouflage,” she says. “We don’t need you alive.”
Then why are you taking me, I want to ask.
They want Bastian. They want the book because his soul is tied to it. I won’t give it up. I promised to protect it.
If they kill me, it might enrage him. It might make him more dangerous.
If they keep me alive…they’ll trade me.
I wish the truth wasn’t so readily apparent, but I know he will. Just as I would for him.
I’m just fucking bait. A token to exchange for a deadly ransom.
Tears stream down my cheeks as she marches us through the arch to the vendor parking lot. I swallow and the shards spear my esophagus.
It must be my imagination, or a trick of some kind. I can still breathe. I wouldn’t be able to breathe if my throat was full of glass.
I have to get away from her…
Lightning.
I haven’t practiced in a month because we’ve been so busy, but I can manifest lightning in my hands.
I dig my heels into the gravel and push back against the woman. She presses her body against mine with an angry growl and drops her hold on the bag to shove my shoulder. I throw my arm behind me, getting a hold on the back of her neck.
With all my will, rage, and might, I force magic down my arm and words across my lips.
The incantation hisses out painfully and orange light erupts behind me in a bright explosion.
I’m thrown forward. My head hits the gravel with a sickening crunch and stars dance in my vision, but immediately, the glass disappears from my throat.
I take a deep, painful gasp, tasting blood. I grope for the bag at my side and roll over, keeping it pinned to me. When I sit up, I see her.
The waitress from the Chubby Radish.
She crawls up to her hands and knees, her head hanging and hair obscuring her face.
“What…the fuck?” I grind out.
Her head whips up and unnatural, stoney features meet me. Her face is frozen, like it was that day at the restaurant when she saw Bastian. There’s an angry black wound across her placid features, and blue liquid drips from her chin.
She blinks once, and her lip pulls back in a snarl as her body contorts. Her arms and legs snap, as if they’re coming apart like fucking tent poles. She charges forward, scrambling on over-long limbs.
I throw my hand out in front of me and summon another flash of lightning. The orange arc snaps from my palm and into the dirt beside her. I kick my feet to push myself away and call another bolt. It smashes her shoulder and burns the side of her shirt, but she keeps coming.
A loud whoomph and a gust of wind blows my hair in my eyes, but I can still see the insanity as thick, reptilian feet slam down on the waitress, pinning her to the earth in front of me. I’m frozen as I look up at him. The real him.
A dragon in truth.
Fifteen feet tall. Massive, taloned hands. A broad, golden armored chest over his green scarred scales. And a long maw full of razor-sharp teeth.
The waitress screeches, clawing at the gravel to get to me, or get away from him.
He falls forward, pinning her down completely. Her head spins around with a sickening crunch and she spits something blue on his shoulder. The liquid sizzles against his armor and he roars in pain.
That roar ends with his teeth around her neck. He shakes his head side to side and tears her flesh.
No, it’s not flesh.
The thing beneath him is still squirming.
He spits out its head, then dives back down to the shoulder.
His teeth shred through it, revealing mechanical bones and plastic sinew.
The metal whines as he tears it in half.
Its dangling spine sprays milky blue fluid across the parking lot as he throws it aside.
The bottom half of the robot twitches as more fluid leaks out from under Bastian’s feet. He reaches for me and I reach back. His massive claws scoop me up and he holds me to the uninjured side of his chest.
I’m sobbing, clutching his soulbound book so hard my fingers ache. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” he growls as he tucks me closer, crushing me into him.
“Holy shit!” someone screams behind Bastian, and I hear their running footsteps retreat.
The worry for his anonymity comes flooding to the forefront of my mind. If word about him gets out, more hunters will come. It’ll be an endless barrage of enemies forever.
Bright blue light spears through the shelter of Bastian’s arms with a loud, electric snap, stopping that worry in its tracks. I tremble as a doorway opens through space and time. A figure appears like a shadow in the light, rippling through it as they stalk forward.
Another waitress appears, this one in a tight black bodysuit with glittering diamonds on the hemlines. She looks like an Olympic gymnast.
She pulls free of the watery portal with a comical bloop that makes the light quiver. Bastian growls a warning deep in his chest, but the woman seems unfazed.
Her arm pulls apart at the elbow, snapping open like a switchblade. She spears the discarded half of the corpse on the ground, and the body begins to melt into her. Her arm blade gets thicker as the material siphons up her body.
It’s like fucking Terminator…
Bastian keeps me pinned to his chest with one arm as he draws through the air with the other. Gold-glittering black magic pours out of his talon into a twenty-foot-long spear.
The gymnast taps her neck, and another silhouette appears in the doorway…then another. Bastian’s growl turns more feral as he hunkers down, curling over me with the golden spear in hand.
The second woman to appear is wearing a police uniform, and the third is in a gauzy, boudoir nightgown.
“Master says she won’t hurt the girl if you come with us now,” the three women say in unison.
“You’ve already hurt her,” he rumbles. “And for that, you and your master will receive death.”