***
“Ferro,” she said, stifling another yawn.
“Yes?” The reply from such a magnificent beast—she was still caught off guard that he could speak English while in animal form—seemed so gentle and caring, almost impossible for something of his size.
“We have a problem.”
“And what problem is that?” he asked, his neck flexing so that he could turn an eye upon her.
“I’m tired, and I’m not secured in,” she told him.
They had been flying for several hours now. The sun was well below the horizon, its light long since extinguished for the day. The moon was beginning its ascent, but it was at its weakest now. They barely had enough light to guide them onward.
The reply from her dragon—and yes, she was beginning to accept that the fates had somehow brought them together—was not at all what she expected.
“That is about to be the least of our worries,” he said. Then his eye narrowed, focusing beyond her. “I fear we may have lingered too long.”
“What? Why?” she asked, twisting around in her seat, all pretense of exhaustion gone as adrenaline coursed through her.
His eyesight must be exceptionally sharp, even in the dark, because it took her a solid thirty seconds to locate what he had seen.
“Shit.” The single word echoed both of their sentiments exactly. “How the hell did they track us so quickly?” she mused.
“I can think of two ways,” Ferro replied, his powerful wings becoming even swifter.
They gained speed, the massive ocher membranes propelling them through the sky. Air began to whistle as it rushed over her, and Ana’s eyes narrowed to slits to keep them open.
“First is that they already had more agents closing in, and they saw us as we were flying. That’s more likely, and more pleasant.” He paused. “As pleasant as this can get, at least.”
Ana frowned. “And the less likely?”
“Merlin.”
She hissed. “They got to him after we left?”
“Either that, or they got to him long before we ever arrived.” Ferro’s voice was heavy with regret.
Ana shook her head. “No, I can’t buy that. Either they captured him and made him talk, or they just so happened to have another team inbound who saw us take flight.”
“I feel as though you are right, but we must stay on guard from here on out. Anyone who says they are with the Council must not be taken at face value.”
Their list of friends, already extremely slim, just grew even smaller.
A sarcastic voice spoke from within her. Sounds just like your normal state of existence. Ana rolled her eyes at the caustic tone of her inner self and concentrated on the situation they now found themselves in.
“Regardless of how, the fact is they are here now,” she told him. “What do we do?”
Ferro flexed his powerful wings again. “Hopefully outrun them,” he forced out. He was beginning to breathe harder already. “It has...been a while...since I tried that,” he confessed.
Ana risked another glimpse behind them. “Well, they still seem to be closing.”
A rumble sounded under her. She looked around frantically, until she realized it was the sound of Ferro growling.
“Yes, they have the high ground,” he said angrily after casting another look behind them. “This is…going to get rough.”
Her stomach lurched at how hard he tried to say that calmly.
“What I wouldn’t kill for a harness right now,” she muttered, her fingers trying to dig deeper between scales, hoping to find better purchase. She kicked off her shoes, watching them tumble away below before her toes dug in between scales as well. Ana could live without shoes for a while. She wasn’t going to live if she fell off during a sharp turn, and something told her the turns were going to be the least of her problems.
“Prepare for a hard brake,” Ferro warned softly, so that his voice wouldn’t carry. She barely heard him, forcing him to repeat his words. By the time she understood and pressed herself against him, it was already time.
With a dragon-sized grunt, Ferro snapped his wings out to full extension and pulled back. The sudden deceleration as they went perpendicular to the ground, his tail pointing straight down and their heads looking up at the stars, smashed her into his scaled neck roughly. She bashed her lip open on the corner of one protrusion, cursing his oddly-shaped scales in her head.
Beside and above her the three dragons that had been pursuing them flew by, jaws snapping at them. The sudden change in speed had caught them off guard though, and they passed by without incident.
A blast of heat washed over her as a cone of blue-white flame spewed from Ferro’s mouth, crisping the wing of one of their attackers. She screamed as the backwash of heat seared hair from her body, her skin glowing bright red.
It hurt. Bad. Every nerve in her body was pounding her with agony, but she still didn’t let go. Ana shunted the pain aside as best she could, forcing her fingers to dig ever deeper into the space between his scales and the skin beneath, even as the ones nearest his fire began to crack and blister. She could feel his skin under the scales growing warm, and Ferro grunted in pain as the target spun away into a downward spiral, the ground rushing up fast.
She prayed the same wouldn’t happen to them.
“Are you okay?” Ferro asked, craning his neck around as best he could to view her.
“I’ve felt better,” she managed through parched and split lips, her lungs seared from the heat as well. Her accelerated healing was already having an effect, dulling the pain. It would soon start healing the rest, but for the moment, she was still in agony. “I won’t let go, but um, maybe point that thing elsewhere next time?” she asked with a painful laugh. The slight sexual connotation of her wording helped ease Ferro’s tension at the fact he had wounded her.
“I am sorry, Ana,” he said sincerely.
“Belay that,” she snapped. “We’re deep in shit right now. You do everything you need to to get us out of here, short of outright blasting me with that breath.”
She waited until Ferro nodded his understanding before she added, “Besides, your morning breath is way worse.”
The big dragon barked a laugh. “Hold on tight,” he warned, sending them surging after one of the other dragons.
Ana scanned the sky, calling out their locations as Ferro banked and weaved, slowly closing the distance on one of their foes. The dragon he had hit had come out of his death spiral and was beginning to gain ground on them from behind. The third was winging hard for higher ground.
“This big blue bastard to our three o’clock is going high,” she shouted, her lungs now only stinging her when she talked, her wounds beginning to heal. Dead skin was flaking off her right hand, which had taken the brunt of the heatwash.
Ferro grunted his understanding. He was intent on the prey ahead of them, a metallic-green-colored dragon. It occurred to her then that she had seen more dragons in the past two days than she had in her entire life up to that point. While they were beautiful to look at, she would be perfectly okay if she could avoid seeing any that weren’t rust-colored for a long while after this.
“The one you hit, the bright red one, he’s coming up underneath you!” she shouted, hoping Ferro would hear her over the rush of the wind.
Up ahead, their target suddenly took a nosedive, trying to escape. Ferro, without thinking, dipped a wing and spun after him. This meant for several long seconds he was upside down. Ana screamed, holding tight to the scale underneath her. Ferro bellowed his anger and fear for her.
And over it all, she heard a sharp tearing sound as the scale pealed back from Ferro’s body. Weakened from where she had been pulling back on it, and where it had been exposed to the blowback of heat from Ferro’s fire, it could no longer support her weight.
With nothing holding her secure, Ana tumbled away, plummeting into the black of the night sky.