27
JESSICA
Well this was shitty.
In retrospect, I should have climbed down from the second floor when I had the chance. After the house exploded with the weight of the dragon tumbling through like a wrecking ball, there was a brief moment where the outer wall had been destroyed. I could have lowered myself down. It was maybe fifteen feet, if I hung from my arms before dropping. I would have been fine.
I would have been safe.
Instead I'd hesitated, whether from surprise or shock or the unwillingness to accept the supernatural fight that was going on. The human fight-or-flight instinct wasn't complete; there was also the stay right where you are because you're too terrified to move instinct. And as luck would have it, that's the one I listened to.
I don't know if the dragon knew where I was, or if he was belching fire randomly, but either way the fire had come, igniting everything with help from the dust-filled air.
And now I stood on this stupid bed, surrounded by fire, with nowhere to go.
The outer wall fell away, revealing the Louisiana forest beyond. If I leaped as far as I could, I would clear the fire... and fall all the way to the ground, probably breaking my legs in the process. A fate worse than burning to death, but one I wasn't ready for just yet.
Half the floor was missing, a truck-sized hole punched through by one of the dragon's rear legs. He'd gotten that leg free, but the others seemed wedged inside, because he roared his terrible roar and kicked his other legs, a motion that made the entire structure shake like a doll house. At any moment the entire thing would collapse, and I would be right in the middle of it.
So much for thinking Mrs. Arnold's scorn was the worst feeling in the world. Burning to death easily took that trophy.
Somewhere in the house Sadie screamed, not in pain but in anger. I heard my name on her lips, telling the dragon where I was, demanding he kill me.
I'M COMING!
Ethan's thought was a sudden beacon of warmth in my mind, and I instantly spotted him flying in the air above. Hope filled my chest, and I waved with both arms.
"Help me! Hurry!" I shouted.
He folded his wings--one of which looked injured--and dove, a green mass of feathers that quickly grew in size.
Time seemed to slow down in that moment. I realized Ethan was diving dangerously fast, when all he needed to do was fly next to me and let me jump on. That's when I felt an emerald gaze, one that wasn't Ethan's at all, and I twisted my head around. Behind the ruins of the wall a black snake slithered, scales as large as dinner plates and with evil horns protruding from its head. The dragon's snout appeared in the open gap in the wall, tendrils of smoke rising from its nostrils as he pushed his way in. The eyes were massive things, glowing like green street lamps, with a narrow oval pupil like a cat's. He opened his mouth in an unmistakable sneer, revealing sharp teeth dripping with saliva.
He breathed, and the smell was like smoke and rot and death.
My eyes widened as I saw the furnace in his gullet begin to glow with fire.
I turned back to my mate, my love, my gryphon rushing toward me. He was leveling out his dive, and would soar past the house in the open space to my right.
JUMP, Ethan insisted.
I shuddered at the thought. If I timed it just right I could leap into the gap and land on his back, but if I missed I would plummet to the ground. But as I felt the sharp inhalation of air behind me, the dragon preparing to breathe his flaming breath, what choice did I have?
I waited another heartbeat, felt the dragon's fire exploding into existence behind me, and then I took my leap of faith.
My legs passed through licking flames, the heat more intense than I could have imagined. And then I was falling into open air, nothing there but the looming ground. I flailed my arms for support, much good that did me, and waited for my fate.
And then Ethan was there.
He soared across the space, a blur of green, just as I fell into it. I struck his body hard and grabbed clumps of feathers in my hands, and although the momentum knocked him sideways he recovered and glided away from the house and above the treetops of the forest.
It worked!
Ethan flew parallel to the ground while I adjusted my grip, pulling up toward his neck to grab onto the gold collar with the emerald set inside. It pulsed even more strongly than the totem in my pocket, the source of Ethan's power. Something that needed protecting.
"Let's get out of here!" I yelled.
No, Ethan shot back, brimming with stubbornness. I will not run. I need to end this now.
I turned to look back at the house. The dragon craned his neck to watch us soar away, fury in his emerald eyes. And farther back, at the base of its long neck, was a similar gold collar to the one I currently held, with an identical emerald glowing with power.
I leaned close to Ethan's gryphon head. "We have to destroy that emerald!"
I've been trying, he sent me back, exasperated at the situation. Easier said than done.
The house began to collapse, a silent implosion from our vantage. The dragon stood as best as he could, then beat his way into the air, wings working slowly and steadily to lift his massive body.
Ethan circled above, watching. Are you holding on? he asked.
"Yep."
He maneuvered himself until we were directly above the dragon, then flapped his wings to remain in place. The dragon tried to climb at an angle, to keep us in his sight, but Ethan adjusted our position so we were always directly above. This required the dragon to tilt his head vertical, like some stupid angry goose honking at the air.
Slowly, Ethan rose, keeping the dragon at a safe distance.
This infuriated the dragon; he let out smaller grunts as he climbed, and his anger came off him in waves like heat. He puffed flames at us harmlessly, impatient at the delay. Now that I was with Ethan, he had no choice but to pursue. He didn't want us to get away after he'd been so close.
We climbed, and climbed, and climbed forever. Soon the ground was so far below that I couldn't look, lest vertigo take over.
I could tell Ethan was exhausted; beyond feeling it in our bond through the totem, I could sense it in the muscles of his back. Each beat of his wings was less smooth than before, the motions becoming jerky and pained. He couldn't do this much longer.
But neither could the dragon, which still climbed after us. The vertical effort was sapping more energy from him than Ethan, and I could feel my mate biding his time, ignoring his own exhaustion as the moment neared.
Soon. Soon. Almost... NOW!
My stomach flew up into my throat as Ethan allowed himself to plummet straight down. His wings were mostly folded, but the tips stuck out while he guided our fall. Suddenly it looked like the dragon were shooting toward us, then next to us, our perspective warped from the fall. He tilted his head slowly to follow us, obviously caught off guard, disbelief shining with the fury in his eyes.
Ethan burst open his wings at the last moment. My stomach fell back into place as we hovered in place above the dragon's wings.
Right next to the base of his neck, where the emerald collar was. It gave off a high-pitched noise in the air, and shimmered with untapped power.
Ethan tilted his wings, reared back, and rammed the gemstone with his beak.
Power exploded from the emerald like a bomb, ripping the feathers in my hands and sending me tumbling backwards off his body. I caught one final glimpse of the dragon's emerald, black fractures spreading away from the center, and then I fell.
My stomach lurched, but settled within seconds. I was now a skydiver without a parachute, limbs splayed flat while I fell from the sky. The wind screamed in my ears painfully, and pulled tears from my eyes to slide across my face.
The ground spread out below, so distant it barely seemed to move; I could pick out the entire forest, with a speck of black smoke that must have been the house, with the road and even interstate in the far distance. But the ground began to grow, imperceptible at first but with rapidly growing speed, which matched the rising panic in my chest.
I was falling to my death. I was going to hit the ground, and die, and that would be the end of everything.
A strange calmness came over me in that moment. I knew what was going to happen, could see my doom rising toward me like a freight train, but I accepted it. There was nothing I could do. I was powerless.
And there was freedom in that, in a way. The freedom from choices.
Peace.
It'd only been a few days, but it felt like Ethan and I had been running from the dragon for years. A constant presence in the back of our heads, making it impossible to enjoy the special bond we shared.
A burden and a curse.
But now, in that moment while falling to my death, there was no more running. No more waiting for the dragon to catch up to us. The fight was here, and it was over, for better or for worse.
I closed my eyes, and savored the time I'd had with Ethan, and waited for the end.
JESSICA!
I heard him in my head before sensing his body, a comforting shape falling next to me. I opened my eyes to find him diving hard, the wind slicking back the feathers of his face. He moved sideways until he was underneath me, slowing himself as I gently landed on his back.
The reality of everything crashed onto me. I'd been falling from the sky... and I'd accepted it! Now that there was safety, a way to survive, my previous calmness felt like madness.
"I take it all back! I want to live! Save me!" I shouted, watching the ground rise rapidly.
Calm down!
Ethan spread his wings, a few inches at a time, resistance growing the more he extended them. Finally he shot them open the rest of the way, the force burying my face into the feathers of his back, and the rough bristles felt better than any down comforter.
I peeked up to see that we were still high in the air, at least a thousand feet above the trees. It'd felt like we had just barely leveled out in time. My pulse pounded against my temple like a drum.
I twisted to look above.
The dragon roared in the air, more high-pitched than before. A scream of pain as he writhed around, wings beating chaotically in the sky. Beams of green light shone through the emerald on his back like lasers, splitting the sky into segments. And then the dragon was falling, roaring with pain as he picked up speed, desperately trying to beat his wings, but they didn't beat with synchronicity and the result sent him into a rolling, looping tumble.
Ethan and I shared a funereal mood as we watched him plummet, pitying the beast in its agony rather than feeling victorious.
It struck the ground next to the smoldering house with immense force, sending the trees swaying and kicking up a great cloud of dirt. For a moment I thought he was dead, or knocked out from the blow, but then he began shrinking before our eyes, growing smaller and paler, wings transforming into hair and skin covered with ink. And then he was a human again, nude and helpless and still.
"Is he alive?" I asked as Ethan kept us hovering in the sky.
A shape came running from the side of the house--to my shock, Sadie had somehow survived the fire. She bent over him, movements almost tender, her care for him obvious even from our vantage.
I mentally kicked myself. That psychopath chased me with a baseball bat and knocked a door down with an ax to try to kill me. Let's not get too sympathetic, Jessica.
And then she was lifting him, which should have been impossible based on their weight difference, but I quickly saw that the dragon was able to stand on his own feet. With an arm around him Sadie helped the dragon over to his truck, guiding him into the passenger seat before hopping in the driver side. The engine gargled to life, and then the truck was making a U-turn and driving back down the dirt path to the main road.
"Let's go," I said, patting Ethan's neck encouragingly. "We can't let them get away."
Let them go, he said simply, and began to descend toward the house.
I gave a start. "Do what now? They kidnapped me! An even if we ignored that, he tried to kill you! A few pecks with your beak and we can pop their tires and call the cops!"
But Ethan didn't answer, and kept descending toward the rising smoke of the house until we were mere feet above the ground. And the feathers pressed against my body began to disappear, receding into Ethan's flesh along with the wings themselves, and his eagle's head shrunk and change to skin and hair and then, before I could think about it, I was holding onto a human in a piggy-back ride.
He fell the final foot to the ground, absorbing the shock with his knees. I let go and slid off of his nude body, casually letting my hands slide down his back and butt.
Hey. A girl's allowed some leeway after a near-death experience.
Ethan let out the longest exhale I'd ever heard, then fell to his knees on the ground.
"Ethan!"
I knelt beside him, putting a cautious hand on his back. He clenched his eyes shut, and then finally began breathing again, gasping like he'd just come up for air.
He looked at me and smiled. The fatigue in his eyes was immense.
"I can't stay in that form forever," he said, barely more than a whisper. "It's... draining, after a while. Near the end there it was tougher and tougher to maintain my gryphon form. I feared I wouldn't be able to hold on, and we'd shift back while we were thousands of feet in the air."
He shuddered, and the thought made me shudder with him. I wrapped my arms around his body to let him know it was okay.
We crouched on the ground like that for a long while, simply holding one another while we processed what had happened.
Ethan pulled away first, kissing my hair before standing. I thought about making a joke about his exposed package, but nothing clever came to mind. Plus it seemed inappropriate just then.
"Now what?" I asked instead.
Ethan stared at the house, which was no longer on fire but still smoldered with black smoke. But it was as if he weren't really staring at that, but at something beyond it, something only he could see.
"There's something here," he said.