25
JESSICA
Watching the dragon shift was an experience unlike any other.
Ethan transformed into the gryphon gracefully. Well, gracefully when you got over how bat-shit-crazy it was. His body expanded, the feathers sprouted into existence, and his face seamlessly changed into an eagle's. It looked natural.
The dragon's shapeshifting was grotesque by comparison. The beast forced its way out of his human body, tearing muscles and with the sickening sound of shattered bone. It looked infinitely more painful, as evidenced by the dragon's scream, which began with human lungs but ended with the bellows of the immense beast.
It filled me with legitimate terror, the kind that made me want to run and hide.
How the hell could Ethan defeat that?
I yelped as it belched fire into the air, narrowly missing my mate. The smoke was so black it blotted out a section of the sky, tainting our view.
"Come here you bitch."
I whirled in time to see Sadie swinging a baseball bat at my head. I fell away from the swing and hit the ground hard, somehow managing to turn that into a roll that put me back on my feet. I sprinted away from her, around the side of the house toward the cars, while she cursed and followed.
The dragon's truck was locked; I had enough time to test the handle when Sadie's bat came crashing down into the side mirror, sending glass flying in all directions.
"Can't we talk about this--WOAH," I yelped as another swing hissed through the air in front of me.
"Fuck you bitch." The dark-haired woman had a crazy look in her eyes. "My dragon is going to tear your gryphon into a thousand tiny feathers for our pillows."
Yeah, there was no negotiating with this one.
I fake-jumped toward Sadie, which made her flinch for the half-second I needed. I turned and ran around the back of the house, not sure what else to do.
Above, the dark stain of the dragon soared slowly through the air. Ethan's smaller shape darted around it, shooting in close before retreating away from gouts of fire. I said a quick prayer for Ethan and returned my focus to my troubles.
There was a back door to the house, or I could run into the thick woods. The house might have a weapon or something I could defend myself with, so I went that way, and found it unlocked.
I closed the door behind me and twisted the deadbolt. Sadie slammed into it, rocking the entire thing on its hinges and sending dust cascading from the ceiling. I was in a dim kitchen, with rusted pots stacked haphazardly on one counter and the smell of something foul nearby. I needed something, anything, but the thought of touching those disgusting pans made me pause.
Glass shattered and peppered the back of my head; I spun to see Sadie breaking the window with her bat. She kicked in the remaining shards of glass with her foot.
I ran down the hallway, which led back into the den where I'd been tied up. I went straight for the chair by the window, gripping it by the backrest and holding it out like a lion-tamer.
Sadie slid to a stop in the doorway. Her eyes were wide and she glanced at the chest in the corner, and relief fell over her. I wondered what was inside, but then Sadie came at me with the bat in both hands, screaming like a goddamn banshee. I shoved the chair in front of me, wood cracking as the bat broke one leg in half, and before Sadie could swing again I bulled forward with it as a shield. She shrieked as the wood slammed into her chest and neck, knocking her back against the wall, but the momentum made me lose my grip and the chair went with her to the ground.
I stopped to survey the damage, but it wasn't enough: Sadie tossed the chair aside and began to stand, a dazed look in her eyes.
I need a weapon.
I ran to the stairs. There was a balcony on the second floor exterior; if there wasn't anything upstairs that I could use as a weapon, I could exit that way and drop down to the ground. I didn't know what I'd do after that, but I'd figure it out when I got to that point.
Halfway up the stairs one of the rotten floorboards snapped in half, sending my leg crashing into open air. I yelped as I fell, banging my other knee on the step and sending pain shooting up my leg. My hands slipped on the dusty surface as I scrambled for purchase, trying to lift myself out of--
THWACK.
The baseball bat slammed into the ball of my ankle. The pain was so bad I screamed, falling forward on my face and almost going through the broken step into the space underneath the staircase. Defenseless and desperate, I kicked behind me like a mule, and my foot made contact with something soft, and I heard Sadie grunt and the sound of something heavy falling down the stairs.
I looked back; she was crumpled in a heap on the landing, and her bat rolled across the floor in the other direction. An intrusive thought came to me: I could descend on her, grabbing her by the hair and smashing her head into the wall again and again. Beating her until there was nothing but red on my hands and on her face.
But the better part of me recoiled at the thought. It didn't matter that this woman had helped kidnap me and was chasing me with a bat. I couldn't kill someone. At least, not now.
I pulled myself out of the chasm of the broken step, but as I tried to put weight on my other leg I cried out with pain and almost fell back in. My ankle was still smarting from the baseball bat, though I didn't think it was broken. I tried putting more weight on it while holding the banister for leverage and winced again.
Sadie groaned and held the side of her head; she was coming-to.
With as much strength as I could muster, I hobbled up to the next step, then the one after that. It took me the better part of a minute, but I made it to the top and could limp after a fashion.
I was in a long hallway with doors on either side. I took the first one on the right, which ended up being a bedroom. I closed the door behind me and locked the knob, then the latch above that.
I turned, pressing my back against the door.
The room was musty and dank, with thousands of dust motes floating through the single sunbeam streaming through the far window. A four-post bed was up against the left wall, with sheets that had long since faded with age. There was a broken sink on the opposite wall, next to another closed door.
I limped across the room, kicking up clouds of dust as I went. The window exited onto the balcony, just as I'd thought. The lock was almost wedged shut, and I had to put my entire body into it before it finally twisted open.
But as I grabbed the bottom of the pane, it wouldn't budge.
"Come on," I muttered, fingers curled underneath the handle. The damn thing must have been stuck from age. I rattled the entire window, hoping to loosen whatever was gumming up the works, but it was no use.
Footsteps in the hall, creaking on floorboards. They stopped outside my door.
The doorknob rattled gently.
"You can't run from me," Sadie said, voice muffled by the thick wood. "You can't run from us. He'll find you, wherever you go!"
I left the window. The door next to the sink ended up being a closet. I was trapped.
"I dated a baseball player in college," I announced. Hearing my own voice made everything feel a little more normal. "All the girlfriends would sit in the stands behind home plate to watch, divided by only an aisle."
I could hear Sadie's confusion when she said, "Huh?"
"The girls were ruthless," I continued, examining the ceiling. There was a ceiling fan that hung slanted and appeared close to falling out, and a lightbulb sticking out of a broken fixture, but nothing else. "They would whisper insults among themselves, but the whispers were just loud enough for the other side to hear, right? And it was a war of words, each side insulting someone from the other side while the boys played ball."
"So fucking what?" she snapped, still behind the door.
"How about we go do that?" I suggested. "We can sit in lawn chairs out in the sun and trade insults while our boys fight up in the sky. What do you say?"
Sadie responded by walking down the hall into some other room, footsteps echoing through the house.
"Guess not," I muttered.
I glanced back out the window; Ethan and the dragon were still circling each other in the sky, a dance of wings. I wondered if I could open the door and make a break for it while Sadie was in another room. It was either that, or sit here and wait for the conclusion of their battle. Sitting around made me feel useless.
Not useless, I thought, gripping the totem in my pocket. I'd given Ethan a chance. Whatever else happened, I'd helped.
Sadie's footsteps returned to my door. There was a short pause, and then something crashed into the wood. It rumbled the door on its hinges a second time, then a third. I thought it was Sadie slamming her shoulder into it, but then a section of the door in the middle split open.
The next blow showed me exactly what it was: a silver ax-head broke all the way through the door, a shower of splinters flying in all directions. She pulled the ax back and swung again, hitting another part of the door. Suddenly the baseball bat didn't seem so bad.
"Fuck," I said.
While Sadie did her best impression of The Shining, I searched for something to break the window. The closet held racks of fur coats that literally fell apart when I touched them, and the wire hangers weren't much better. There were some old cardboard boxes in the corner of the closet, but they were crumpled and held stacks of moldy paper.
The pounding of Sadie's ax was like a clock counting down, vibrations in the floor that made me wince each time.
I went to the four-post bed and got on my hands and knees. There was nothing under there that could break a window. Shit. Shit-shit-shit. I was trapped in this room, and in a few minutes she'd be inside with an ax.
I grabbed the bedpost to pull myself back to my feet, and the entire structure collapsed.
The air was knocked from my lungs as I fell onto my back, the brass bedpost clattering to the floor next to me. Sadie's ax-swings paused for a moment, probably in surprise, but then resumed.
Pushing to my feet, I eyed the bedpost.
I slammed the brass rod into the window like a medieval jouster. It bounced off harmlessly. I tried again, a little bit harder this time, but the bubbled glass was ancient, from a time when windows were as thick as steel. With each successive failure I grew more desperate, grunting and groaning with each useless thrust. I even turned sideways and swung the bedpost like a baseball bat into the window, but there wasn't so much as a crack to show for it.
I tossed the rod down with disgust and anger, then quickly picked it back up again, rounding on the door.
Sadie was almost through. The gash was big enough for a dog, and I could see her body on the other side. I could only hope the exertion from breaking the door down with a goddamn ax would leave her weak enough for me to fight. If I could knock the ax away and get in close, inside her swing range, I might have a chance.
I took deep breaths, hardening my resolve.
Sadie looked through the hole, insanity in her eyes as she saw me. She reached through and unlocked the doorknob, then the bolt. The door was so warped that it scratched along the floor, but it opened enough for her to step through.
She held the ax across her body and smiled.
And then, without warning, the house exploded.