Chapter 7 The Trap
Several hours later, I stand in a dead-end mountain pass, nothing but bare rock walls and silence around. My pounding heartbeat keeps me company as I wait.
We've located Vakhrin's grandfather, several dozen miles out from the village, chasing a heard of deer.
Vakhrin directed me—with gestures of tail and paw— back to this pass we had scouted earlier, and I flew ahead to lie in wait.
He'll run the old manticore to me, and I'll wrangle and pin him so Vakhrin can make the killing blow.
The thought turns my stomach, but I push the hesitation from my mind. This is what we're doing. This is what needs to be done. It's a duty of another kind.
Although the duty that I thought required me to kill before turned out to be a lie.
I can't think about that. It seems unlikely that Vakhrin would lie about this.
And I'd rather be a foolish believer than a cold-hearted skeptic. Marton taught me that. He believed in me before he even knew me. Believed in magic before he had any evidence of it, and believed that a dragon could be someone worth knowing.
He saved me from the lie I was living. The endless murder I was trapped in. Choosing to believe him saved me from that.
Belief is always the better choice, I decide.
I'm going to be more like Marton from now in. I'll just go in with my heart and my mind wide open, ready for anything. Ready for anyone.
Vakhrin might be someone like me, who never had a chance at friends or acceptance before.
He had a family, but there's no telling where they are now.
His parents might be dead, from the vague thing he said about them earlier.
Or they just might not be on the best of terms with their son. Either way, he's alone.
Where would I have been by this time in my life, I wonder, if I hadn't been forced together with Cherry as a child? Would I have wound up alone?
How long would it have taken, for the people in my village to turn on me? Or for someone from far away to come try and slay me, for no other reason than because of what I was? Because I looked like a monster.
At that moment, a rippling roar tears above the tree line towards me. Several birds take flight in surprise, and the foliage begins to rustle far in the distance. But my raptor vision sees it, and my sensitive ears hear it.
The sound of running feet comes next, impossibly quick, and more snarls and roars of rage. Headed straight for me.
I lower on my front legs, into a crouch, ready to spring into action at the first sight of a manticore.
It comes faster than I'm expecting.
A blurring silvery shape bursts through the undergrowth into the rocky pass I wait in, hurtling straight for me. The monster leaps, claws extended towards me. I lung to grab it, and the creature beats its wings, shooting over my head.
I growl in surprise, whirling. The manticore lands in the pass behind me and keeps running, unaware of the dead end it's headed for. Vakhrin's grandfather has stark, silver fur, and as he runs he snarls at nothing, shaking his head from side to side, slavering from the mouth.
My heart clenches painfully within me. This is the monster the villagers are afraid of. A beast in pain, antagonized by internal demons.
Bearing up under a new wave of determination, I hurl myself down the passage, spreading my wings to catch an updraft. The canyon is just wide enough to give me room to lift into the air, and flap furiously, trying to get ahead of the manticore.
I hear Vakhrin's claws on the stone behind me, but I don't turn around to look. I have a job to do, and I just failed at the first part of it.
Pouring on the speed, I shoot ahead of the old manticore, coming to a stop atop the rim of the canyon beyond. The dead end.
Vakhrin's silver-furred grandfather comes hurtling around the bend a moment later, and he cries in shock and outrage to see the dead and ahead.
As he scrambles, trying to decide if he should turn around or take to the air, I fling myself from the top of the wall, front legs extended as I dive, wings tucked in tight.
The manticore gives a feline cry and tries to turn, seeing me, but I'm too quick, dropping like a stone with the full force of my body weight behind me.
My claws lock like a cage around the impenetrable fur of his neck ruff, and we go rolling across the stone, fetching up against the wall with an echoing boom that feels like it shakes the whole mountain range.
I hurry to gain the upper hand, keeping the manticore pinned, and the old grandfather snarls in outrage.
He foams at the mouth, eyes wild and rolling as he looks for a way to escape my hold.
All four clawed feet scrabble at my torso, clattering against my scales.
He only grows more enraged when this move proves ineffectual.
I had almost forgotten about the beast's tail when it comes swinging for me like a battering ram. It takes me hard in the side, knocking the breath from me with a blossoming shock of pain. The manticore growls and rears back again. Crack. He strikes me in the side again.
Smoke pours from my throat in a gasp, and my claws loosen.
Then Vakhrin is there, flinging himself around the bend. He stumbles to a halt in the pass across from us, sliding on loose shale. The manticore beneath me is distracted from his struggling, falling momentarily still as he focuses, snarling and growling, on the new threat.
I take the opportunity to renew the strength of my hold, digging the tips of my claws into the stone beneath the manticore's throat. An inescapable prison. My side throbs painfully, but I ignore it, trusting that once again, the barbs of the manticore's tail haven't broken through my scales.
Vakhrin's piercing gray eyes go from his pinned grandfather to my face and back again as he paces towards us.
His tail lashes behind him as he lowers his head towards his grandfather.
His mouth opens, teeth showing, but instead of going for the killing strike, as I expect, he lets out a low, keening note, which rises and swells like the most beautiful music.
The manticore beneath me goes still in the extreme, nearly limp. His mad eyes cease their incessant movement, focusing with visible effort on the source of this song. Gruff and halting, the manticore beneath me opens its own mouth to coo something back.
The sound is muffled by my grip, as well as several broken teeth in the creature's mouth—not from me, I don't think. But whatever the music means, Vakhrin abruptly shifts back to human form.
I stare, gaping in surprise and confusion.
So I'm not looking down when the manticore moves beneath me.
My hold is suddenly insubstantial as air, nothing in my grip.
I glance down in a panic, but the manticore hasn't gotten free.
In its place, so much smaller than the manticore was that I nearly miss it, is a wizened old human man.
I rear back, concerned. The old man twitches upon the ground, groaning in pain. His head lashes from side to side, hands scrabbling against stone.
Expression pained, Vakhrin approaches the old man, crouching in the dust beside him.
"Grandfather," he whispers, and my ears strain to pick it up. "Pa-pa. It's me. It's Vakh." The old man groans again, squeezing his eyes shut.
"No, no, no, no. It hurts. It hurts."
"I know, Pa-pa. I'm here. I'll make it stop. I'll make it—" Vakhrin gets choked, and he swallows his emotion with what look like great effort.
"I didn't mean to, Vakh. I didn't mean it.
I'm sorry." The old man's eyes fill with tears, and they stare nearly sightlessly up at his grandson.
His body twitches again, writhing as the venom course through him.
"It hurts." After a moment, the convulsions cease, and the old man pants, gathering himself.
"Your grandmother," he breaths. "She would—she would be so disappointed in me—"
"Shh, no," says Vakhrin, forcing a brittle smile. "She would have put you down in an instant if she were still around, you old bag." In a gentler tone, more sincere, "She would have eased you on to the next life, as you did for her."
"Make it quick, Vakh, my boy. I can't hold on much longer." As he speaks, the old men tips his head back, exposing his throat.
Vakhrin's eyes fill with moisture, and the breath hisses from him in an agonized pant. He looks at me, and I feel abruptly like an interloper, standing watching this family tragedy I have no part in. I turn as if to go, but Vakh shakes his head.
"Stay," he whispers. "In case he tries to run again." He gets to his feet, rock chips imbedded in his knees, although he doesn't seem to feel it. "Farewell, old man," he whispers. Vakh shifts in a flash, and the intelligent-eyed manticore gazes down as the old man gazes back.
He takes a step closer, and the old man squeezes his eyes shut. "Farewell, my boy," the old man whispers back.
Vakh's claws move in a flash, and a gout of blood of blood sprouts from his grandfather's throat, running down across the stone.
I look away, sickened and saddened beyond measure. My dragon eyes prickle with fire, the air scraping in my lungs.
Vakhrin swallows, sheathing his claws as he continues in manticore form, gazing down at the body of his grandfather.